


Sing To Me

by LittleRedPencil



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adashicember 2018, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2019-10-26 04:29:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17739023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRedPencil/pseuds/LittleRedPencil
Summary: Thirty years after Allura sacrificed herself to stop Honerva and save all existing realities, the Paladins have awoken to find that no time has passed since their fight with Lotor in the quintessence field. The destruction and death they all lived through has been a second layer of their judgment at the hands of the entity Coran calls Bob, to show them the consequences of bad decisions. Now they have a chance to take a new path and save the ones they lost, and bring real peace to the universe. And Shiro has a chance to get back what he gave up for Kerberos.----Basically, the Adashicember 2018 prompts put together into a fic, like ten years late. Sorry.





	1. Reunion: Part 1

The Galra cruiser drifted lazily past Kerberos, its scanners picking up no signs of enemy activity in the sleepy edges of the Terran solar system. It moved at a sedate pace, its occupants hoping to avoid an approach of Earth that was too fast and would set off alarms.

Down in the med bay, the ship’s unofficial Captain sat on an exam table with three Alteans flitting around him, checking his vitals and running software checks. It was, to say the least, a little bit weird.

“Everything looks good, one woman chirped, putting down her tablet and stepping back. The others followed suit as she turned to the ship’s actual official Captain. “Allura? It’s finished.”

Allura sat in a chair at the nearby desk, her chin on one hand, a thousand yard stare in her eyes. Shiro knew the look all too well.

“Thank you,” he said in her stead, flexing the newly attached arm. “I appreciate it. So does she, she’s just a little bit tired. We’ve been running her ragged up on the bridge.”

The Alteans insisted on conversing for a little longer, still thrilled at the newness of the “humans” in their midst, and Shiro politely entertained their questions and chatter. Eventually they had other things to do and excused themselves, leaving him to slide off the exam table and go over to the desk. He rested the hand of his new prosthetic on Allura’s shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze.

It was nothing like the prosthetic he’d gotten used to, the floating forearm and the heavy shoulder base. This one was much more similar to his Galra prosthetic, pearl white with shimmering silver joints. Allura had still been the one to make it, and it was still powered by the crystal from her crown, but it was very different.

A lot of things were very different.

Only a month ago, Shiro had been preparing to celebrate his fifty-sixth birthday. He had been married for twenty-four years to another ex-soldier who had served with him on the bridge of the IGF Atlas.

Allura had been dead for almost three decades, Keith had been leading the Blade of Marmora for two, and Lance had been a part-time ambassador between Altea and Earth for almost thirty years. Hunk and his wife Shay had retired from the military to open a chain of five-star restaurants and raise their three sons, Katie Holt was a system-renowned engineer and mathematical genius who toured interstellar colleges with her brother and her two equally genius daughters.

Today, Shiro was still twenty-six years old. He was still single, still the Black Paladin, and still floating through space with team Voltron. Keith still piloted Black, Lance still piloted Red, Pidge still piloted Green, and Hunk still piloted Yellow. They were still teenagers.

Allura was still alive…but it was possible her days of piloting the Blue Lion were coming to an end.

“Hey,” Shiro gave her a gentle shake, pulling her out of her daze. “Come on, we’re done here. Come up to the bridge with me.”

Allura wordlessly let him pull her to her feet. She stayed up under her own power and walked on her own, which was good. Sometimes she couldn’t do that, and she was often nonverbal. And Shiro did not blame her one bit for needing a real span of time to recover.

They all needed some time to recover, but Allura the most.

Shiro still vividly remembered the moment he realized things were not right. He had been standing in the kitchen of the house he’d lived in with his husband for the last ten years, going through the mail. Junk mail, all of it, some of it addressed to Takashi Shirogane and some of it addressed to Curtis Shirogane. Some of it addressed to both. Shiro had been looking at the mail and wondering what it would have felt like if he had been the one to change his name after marriage, if all the mail these days had been coming in with Curtis’ surname.

Except he hadn’t been able to remember what Curtis’ last name before marriage was. And then it had occurred to him that he’d never actually known.

It had occurred to him that he had this perfect little life, this comfortable house and this lovely retirement spent going to farmer’s markets and doing jigsaw puzzles on lazy days, but that family didn’t factor in.

He didn’t know anything about Curtis’ family. He didn’t know his parents’ names, or where they were from, or if he had siblings. He didn’t know what they looked like or what they did for a living. When he thought about his wedding, the only faces that came to mind were the other Paladins and a few Garrison coworkers. He didn’t remember meeting any of Curtis’ friend.

It had occurred to Shiro that he didn’t really know anything about Curtis outside of their home. It was as if the other man simply ceased to exist when they weren’t together, like he was an actor who stepped in when there were lines to be spoken by “Husband.”

He had called Keith, who was basically his little brother by now, and they’d met up. Speaking in whispers they discussed a lot of things and found that they didn’t really remember everything the same way. So they’d called Lance. And Hunk, and Katie. And things had gotten weirder.

Widening their net, they’d spoken with Coran next, then with Romelle, and even Krolia. Nobody remembered certain events as having happened the same way. No two of them remembered the same conversations, or the same people being in the same places. The last thing they had all been able to agree on was loading up the Lions and the destruction of the Castle. Everything after that seemed to go off the rails.

Shiro now walked through the hall with an arm around Allura, suppressing a shudder. The cruiser had been commandeered by the Voltron team, its crystals replaced with clean balmera crystals and the eerie purple lighting that always seemed to darken these things replaced by bright and cheery white. The seams and cracks glowed with a pleasant blue of pure quintessence, making for a much more welcoming vessel. They had acquired it shortly after what they were all now referring to as “the shock.”

Thirty years had passed for all of them since the day the Paladins had been pulled into a strange, dreamlike state and come out of it claiming to have been pulled into a strange game show vision. They had grown and changed, lived their lives. They had seen Earth destroyed, lost loved ones, fought a war. They had walked bewteen universes and seen reality nearly destroyed, had watched Allura give up her life to save everything.

And then, just like that, they had all woken as one to find it had been a dream lasting only a few hours.

Well, not exactly a dream. The entity Coran referred to as Bob had been holding them, weaving them pretty little retired lives and leaving them trapped until they won his game. The Paladins themselves had played and won the first level, but they’d all been unwittingly trapped in the second. And it had taken them thirty years to come to terms with the fact that they had made bad decisions, that they had made choices that had adversely affected the entire universe. Thirty years to realize that they had made a mistake that destroyed countless lives.

That was when Bob had let them go. When they’d all finally been brave enough to talk about the past. When they’d all finally been strong enough to admit that they were the reason for so much suffering.

That they had fractured the Galra. That Shiro’s decision to eject Sendak from the Castle of Lions had led to him being taken back to actively serve Haggar. That their decision to leave Lotor in the quintessence field had destabilized an empire. That their method of sealing the rifts had taken them away for three years and let Haggar wreak havoc. That their absence had left Earth undefended, and that Shiro’s rivalry with Sendak had led directly to it being attacked.

That it was their fault the Blade of Marmora had been hunted down and killed, their fault the Coalition had fallen, their fault the Alteans had been turned to Honerva in Lotor’s absence.

It was when they’d finally confronted these things that they had been released.

They’d all woken in the Lions, drifting quietly in space, to find they were only a day out from the planet they’d been resting on after the explosion. To find that the lives they’d built weren’t real, that the time they’d spent as aged and grown men and women was gone and they were just a bunch of dumb young adults again.

To find that Pidge easily made contact with Matt and the Coalition. To find that sealing the rift hadn’t really caused a time dilation. To find that Voltron was still considered an ally of the Galra under Emperor Lotor.

To find that peace was still within reach, if they made the correct decisions this time.

They had swallowed their pride and done what they needed to do…Voltron had returned to the quintessence field and removed Sincline and Lotor. They had manipulated themselves a cruiser from their allies without letting them know the truth and had gone to the colony where Keith had found Romelle.

They had learned a lot there, which made all of them feel even worse. Romelle was right, there was no second colony, but she hadn’t been entirely correct. The Alteans in the tubes on the moon facility were not, in fact, being drained of their quintessence, but had been overexposed while working to build Lotor’s rift gate. They were being treated for overexposure, with the excess quintessence being siphoned off to help them…not harm them.

Because the rift gate was a secret, Alteans chosen for the “second colony” weren’t told about it until they were taken away. Bandor had been delirious from overexposure when he’d escaped, and he had not been completely dead when Lotor had collected him. In fact, Bandor was currently with Romelle and their parents, off duty for the evening.

They had decided to take the Alteans to Earth for their own safety. There was plenty of room there for them to be safe and protected by the Coalition until true peace was reached, and so the Galra cruiser had an Altean crew and an Earthling bridge crew.

Shiro and Allura reached the entrance to that bridge and were met with a familiar face. Lotor approached from the eastern corridor, looking tired and slightly irritated. He was still recovering from overexposure himself, as well as a severely bruised ego for having let his first trip into the quintessence field with Allura drive him borderline mad by the time the fight had started. Running an empire while avoiding telling anyone in it that he was currently on a ship of Alteans couldn’t be so great for his mental state either.

“How is she?” Lotor asked as he reached them, lightly petting Allura’s hair. It was down now, flowing down her back, held back from her face by silver combs some of the Altean women who tended her had put in.

“She was good earlier,” Shiro answered, squeezing Allura lightly in a one-armed hug before surrendering her over to Lotor. They all took shifts looking out for her, and he insisted on doing so as well. “She came to me and said she’d finished a new arm for me…and she did good work, it feels great. But halfway through them putting it on she zoned out again.”

“Has she eaten?”

“Not yet. I was going to get her some dinner once we were done in the med bay, but now…”

“I’ll take care of it,” Lotor promised. “We’ve jumped into your solar system now. I imagine you’ll all want to man a landing crew alone before informing your people you’ve brought a cruiser full of aliens home with you.”

“The sooner the better,” Shiro agreed. “I don’t want to keep them away from their families any longer than I have to.”

Lotor nodded and put an arm around Allura, gently leading her on down the hall. Shiro heard her speak softly, waking up a little as she often did for Lotor, and then they turned a corner and were gone.

If suddenly losing lives built over thirty years had been traumatic for the rest of them, it had been worse for Allura. Shiro and the Paladins were swiftly forgetting everything as if it had been a dream. They were all beginning to settle comfortably back into reality, to remember how lost and lonely they were and be eager to get back to parents and siblings and friends.

But Allura had died at the beginning. Not for real, since it was a false life they were leading, and so she’d experienced her own death and then had been suspended in a state between life and death. Suffering for what felt to her like thirty years. Her trauma was very real, and it was taking her time to recover.

Shiro sighed and stepped onto the bridge, only to have heads swivel and eyes turn to him. The Paladins were all here, and he could tell they were practically chomping at the bit to get home.

“Okay, I’m here,” he declared, moving to the Captain’s dais that should rightfully have been occupied by Allura. He felt like a trespasser. “Pidge, open a channel.”

“Got it.” Pidge was already hitting buttons, probably just waiting for the command. “Okay. All set, go for it.”

Here went nothing.

“Attention Earth,” he hailed, doing his best to keep his voice steady as he looked at the beautiful blue planet on the viewscreen. “This is Captain Takashi Shirogane, formerly of the Galaxy Garrison, hailing from the GSS Daklor. Requesting permission for Team Voltron to land.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Four Lions touching down on a Garrison base tarmac was definitely a reason for distraction, and it showed. Shiro stood behind Black’s pilot seat, looking at the gathering of people on the viewscreen over his shoulder. The faces of the other Paladins showed to the side, all of them looking equally uncertain of how to feel.

“The city’s still standing,” Lance whispered. “There are still cars going back and forth on the highway.”

“Look, there’s a plane,” Hunk pointed out in the distance, a commercial airliner coming in to land. “Did you see on our way in? People are walking on the street!”

“Everything’s still here,” Pidge sounded like she might start to cry. “Everyone’s okay. I can’t believe everyone is okay.”

“We should go out there,” Keith supposed. “We can’t sit in here forever.”

“Wait,” Shiro put a hand on Keith’s shoulder, looking back at the others. “Before we go out there…I just want to remind you that Admiral Sanda is still alive and is still in charge. And I want to let you know that you do _not_ have to bow down to the Earth military. You’re the leaders of the Voltron Coalition, if Earth wants to join then they agree to abide by your rules. Do not let them try to turn Voltron into a Garrison-owned weapon, and don’t let them try to turn you into Garrison-owned soldiers. Nobody here is in charge of you. Of any of us. Understand?”

A soft chorus of ‘yes,’ which was good. Shiro did not want these kids, who knew more about the universe than anyone here on earth, being under the thumb of military brass.

“All right, let’s go.”

Shiro watched as the comm links turned off, each Lion shutting down. He let Keith leave the cockpit first and followed behind, only stepping up beside him once they were on the tarmac and approaching the gathered base staff.

Sanda was front and center, with Iverson. On her other side was a familiar face that made Shiro’s stomach do uncomfortable flips.

Of course Curtis was a real person, Shiro knew that. He had seen him on the base before Kerberos but only vaguely knew him by his first name. Now he was approaching the man who he had been married to for twenty-four years and felt so oddly like he was looking at a stranger.

Curtis was watching him in return. Watching all of them, of course. He recognized them as faces he’d also seen at the Garrison, Shiro could tell, but there was no intimacy in that gaze. He was just an officer, watching other soldiers return from war.

“This is so weird,” Keith whispered to Shiro. He was looking at Curtis as well. “I feel like I just went to your 20th anniversary dinner.”

“Well don’t tell that to him, he might expect a gift,” Shiro murmured.

Sanda stepped forward as they reached the group, looking them over with her usual unimpressed expression.

“Captain Shirogane,” she greeted Shiro before turning her eyes to the others. “Cadets.”

“That’s General Shirogane, actually,” Keith corrected her immediately, taking the advice to not let anyone here get the upper hand on him to heart. “You can refer to me as General Kogane. And these would be Lieutenant Generals McClain, Holt, and Garrett. We’re kind of in charge of an interplanetary military, so some respect would be nice. Ma’am.”

Shiro had to bite the inside of his cheek at the stunned look on Sanda’s face, and he could hear Lance, Hunk and Pidge making soft noises as they tried not to die. He had never in a million years thought he’d appreciate Keith’s complete lack of regard for Garrison authority, but it was definitely a show worth seeing. He didn’t doubt Keith had a lot of pent-up ill will toward the Garrison from his time here.

“And, if you’ll excuse us,” Keith put up a hand to stop Sanda from speaking, which only shocked her more. “We only asked for permission to land to be polite, there’s nothing you could have done to stop us. So this isn’t actually a military meeting, and my teammates have family to go see. But you have my permission to schedule a debriefing for twenty-four hours from now, we’d be happy to speak to you then. Guys?”

Keith snapped his fingers and motioned for them to go, now while they had the chance. Hunk, Pidge and Lance took one look at the completely stunned Garrison officers and took off running, and Shiro had to purse his lips not to laugh.

He was glad Keith was putting his foot down. They deserved to go see their families before they had to put up with questions.

Shiro knew he wasn’t so lucky, he and Keith were probably going to sit down for a conversation with Sanda and the others now, but it would hopefully be less painstakingly detailed than what would happen when the whole group was available. And he was glad, because he was distracted.

He was scanning the crowd, looking for a familiar face but not finding it. Everyone he knew was here, everyone he had worked with before Kerberos. But there was one person missing.

Iverson suggested they go to one of the meeting rooms, as expected. Shiro followed along, still searching but coming up with nothing. He saw his fellow pilots grinning and waving to him and returned their greetings from a distance, but that wasn’t what he was looking for.

It wasn’t until they approached the main building that a door opened and a few officers Shiro didn’t recognize stepped out. Four he didn’t recognize, to be exact, and a fifth one that he did.

Shiro stopped dead, staring at the tall figure in uniform. The smooth, light brown skin, the golden eyes and hair, the lean body with its elegant build that masterfully hid the fact that its owner was a clumsy disaster…Shiro had been beginning to think that Adam was really dead, but there he was.

Late as all hell, which shouldn’t have been a surprise in the least.

Adam stopped when he saw them, his gaze focusing in on Shiro. Shiro saw his eyes move up, taking in the white of his hair, then to the side to look at his arm. The golden gaze moved back to his face, looking at the scar there, trying to make the connection that this insanely different person really was the one who’d left for Kerberos a few years ago.

His expression was hard to read. Shock, mostly, but Shiro didn’t know if it was good or bad. He had sent a message home with Sam, a message meant for Adam, but he didn’t know if the other man ever got it. And even if he did, he didn’t know if his request for a second chance would be honored. They had not parted on great terms, for all he knew Adam already had someone else.

Shiro started to move forward again, not so much of his own accord but because his feet were automatically moving him toward where he wanted to be. This was the face he thought about during quiet, lonely times, this was the person he missed when people talked about home. This was what he’d given up for space, what he regretted leaving behind now that he was no longer sick.

He thought Sanda might be saying something to him, but Shiro kept walking. Over by the building, Adam shoved the tablet he was holding into another officer’s hands and started running.

Shiro caught him as Adam leapt into his arms, wrapping his legs around his waist and clinging to him as if afraid he would disappear. The other pilot was a lot lighter than Shiro remembered, or maybe he’d simply gotten that much stronger during the war, but everything else felt the same. The shape of Adam against him, the warmth of the arms wrapped around him, it was all what he’d been missing.

“Honey, I’m home,” Shiro murmured, burying his face against Adam’s shoulder.

“Idiot,” Adam mumbled against the collar of his armor. “Do you have any idea what you put me through, Takashi?”

“No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me,” Shiro assured him, squeezing him tightly one more time before he finally put him down. “And honestly, I can’t wait to sit down and listen to anything you have to say.”

“Now he wants to listen,” Adam whispered, feet settling on the ground. He pushed his glasses up into his hair and Shiro could see the tears starting to form in his eyes as Adam reached up to cup his face in both hands. “Nothing I had to say was important before the stupid Pluto mission, but now you want to listen. Jesus Christ Takashi, you’re like three years late without a goddamn Starbucks. And what the _fuck_ happened to your hair?”

Shiro finally laughed, feeling his own eyes start to sting. He had expected the worst, he had _lived_ through the worst, now here he was with Adam standing in front of him. Alive, well, and exactly the same as when he’d left.

“I missed you so much,” he admitted, leaning forward to rest their foreheads together. “You have no idea how much I’m looking forward to having you yell at me some more.”

Adam stared at him for a second, then let out a small laugh of his own. He didn’t pull back, or push Shiro away, and that felt even better.

“I’m going to take you up on that,” Adam assured him softly. “Believe me, it’s going to be something. I’ve practiced this tirade in the shower, there are swears in six languages involved.”

It was incredibly intimate, considering they were being watched by a crowd. Adam didn’t do public displays, to go this far was positively scandalous. Reluctantly, Shiro pulled back a little and took Adam’s hand in his own, bringing it up to kiss the back of it.

“I have to let you go,” he murmured. They were still on a military base, and Adam at least was still a soldier under Sanda’s and Iverson’s command. He had to respect that. “I have to go meet with Sanda, and I know you’re still on duty. Can I come see you after?”

“If you don’t I’ll hunt you down,” Adam threatened, taking a shaking breath and backing away. “I have one more class for the day and then I’ll be in my office.”

Shiro wanted to scoop him up and carry him away from the base, take him out to dinner and just listen to nothing but his gorgeous voice all evening. It was almost physically painful to let him go, to back away and fall back into step with Keith as he started moving again.

“When are you going to tell him you died?” Keith asked as they stepped into the building. Shiro felt a cold wave of fear wash down his spine.

“We are _not_ going to tell him I died,” he stated. “Ever.”

“Never? Really?”

“Never.”

“How much is never worth to you?”

Shiro looked down at Keith, who was grinning like an idiot, and knew his silence wasn’t going to come cheap. He took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh, not believing they had been back on Earth for less than an hour and he already had to deal with bribery.

“Just keep your mouth shut for now and we’ll discuss it later,” he advised, nudging Keith with his elbow. “ _General_.”


	2. Reunion: Part 2

“Your compass is one of the most important instruments on your console,” Adam explained, motioning to the device on the diagram hanging over the white board. “A malfunctioning compass can leave you lost over the desert or sea, it can put you miles off course and burn up your fuel before you can find a safe place to land. Most small planes lost at sea can be attributed to malfunctioning navigation instruments. I want you to turn to page…yes, Cohen?”

Adam had been intentionally taking no questions from the class, but Cohen’s hand had been up for a solid five minutes and he couldn’t pretend he didn’t see it anymore. The kid was practically falling out of his chair.

“Is it true Takashi Shirogane came back to Earth today?” Cohen asked excitedly. “In one of those giant lions that landed at the airfield?”

Ugh. The topic Adam had been trying to avoid like the plague. Everybody at the base was talking about the arrival of the lions and the return of the Garrison’s missing pilot and cadets, but Adam wasn’t interested in gossiping with children.

“Yes, Cohen,” he answered, pointing back at the diagram. “So if you turn to page—“

“And is it true you fly with him? You’re his copilot and flight partner, right?”

“Yes, Cohen. Turn to pa—“

“What is he like? Was he really captured by aliens? Is Earth going to be part of a space war?”

“Are you two married?” One girl piped up before Adam could request silence. “My older brother said you used to drive to the base together and he saw you kiss in the car once.”

 _I am never having children_ , Adam thought bleakly as the classroom of thirteen-year-olds erupted into scandalized gasps.

“You’re married to Takashi Shirogane?” Cohen asked in awe.

“I’m not married,” Adam stated. “Yes, it’s now common knowledge that Captain Shirogane is a former prisoner of war, no we do not currently know the state of hostilities for me to tell you Earth’s stance. And as far as what Captain Shirogane is like…imagine a red panda, only even more prone to overdramatics. If you have any further questions you can ask Commander Iverson while you spend Saturday in detention, otherwise please turn to page two-hundred-six in your text.”

There were groans of displeasure, but no further questions. Adam managed to get through the class with only a few more hiccups, but it was obvious the kids were distracted and not paying terribly close attention. He could have let them off the hook this once. Instead he decided he was going to give them a pop quiz next class on what they weren’t listening to today.

He did let them out about five minutes early, but that was only because he’d reached the end of his own patience. He was finding himself glancing at the clock more and more often, and he could hardly continue to try keeping a room full of children on target if he was distracted himself.

Adam forced himself to take his time and go through his usual routine. He walked the classroom to make sure nothing had been left behind, cleaned the white board, and put away the diagrams he’d used today. He packed away the folders with collected tests and assignments into his bag, and removed the firearm that remained locked in a drawer when students were in the classroom as per Garrison procedure. He strapped it back in place on his person then locked up the classroom and went to the main office.

The secretaries both went silent when Adam walked in, making him more than a little paranoid as he went over to the mail bins and left the completed lesson plan for tomorrow in his own. He took a moment to go through what had been left for him there…newsletter, memo from Iverson regarding the new grade entry system they were considering switching to, reminder from Thompson that everyone was meeting in town for open mic night at the bar on Friday.

While he perused the messages and mail, he felt the eyes staring at him. He ignored it for as long as he could before he finally looked up at the two secretaries sitting quietly behind the main desk.

“What?” He asked, annoyed.

“Nothing,” Caitlin answered, immediately looking down and clearly doing her best not to smile.

“Absolutely nothing,” Joshua agreed, pointedly looking in the opposite direction. Adam shook his head and went back to his mail.

“Just…you know. They’re saying Captain Shirogane is back,” Caitlin said lightly.

Adam scowled at the page of a classroom supply catalog. He did not like the tone of her voice.

“Are they? I hadn’t heard.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Oh, well let me help you out there,” Caitlin offered, fishing her phone out of the drawer. “I have some pictures. Josh, look at these. You too, Adam, you’ll love these.”

Adam groaned but gave in and went around the desk, dropping his mail on the edge of it on his way. He didn’t really want to see any pictures but he had to know what Caitlin had. She held up her phone for them to see and brought up a picture of Takashi stepping out of one of the lions, crossing the tarmac with Keith beside him.

“Do you think he did something with his hair?” Caitlin asked Josh. “I think he did something with his hair.”

“I think he might’ve cut it,” Josh answered dryly. Caitlin swiped along to other pictures, moving to ones of the group walking away from the lions. She stopped when she got to one of Takashi moving away from the group, striding across the quad.

“Look at this,” she gushed, holding up the phone. “Look at those arms. Jesus Christ, he got huge.”

“Why are you doing this to me?” Adam asked. “What did I ever do to you?”

“ _Huge_ ,” Caitlin repeated gleefully. “Even with the armor you can tell. I wonder what those pecs look like now. Do you think he’s still into the stupidly tight t-shirts? God, I hope so. Oh! Oh! And look at this one!”

She swiped again, this time bringing up a picture of Adam in Takashi’s arms.

“Isn’t this freaking adorable?” She teased, flashing the picture for them both to see. “Look at you! Curled up around him like a little koala! God, he makes you look tiny now. I guess what you meant when you said you hadn’t heard was that you were so stunned to be climbing that like a tree you temporarily went deaf.”

“Caitlin,” Adam said tiredly. “What have I told you about this kind of gossipy bullshit?”

“Email only, don’t text,” Caitlin said innocently, looking up at him with wide eyes. “And don’t be a cheap bitch by compressing the resolution. Garrison address or private?”

“Private,” Adam answered, pushing away from the desk and grabbing his mail. “Do you know if Curtis is in that meeting with Iverson and Sanda?”

Caitlin tapped her phone again, putting away the pictures and opening her messages.

“ _I don’t want to be here_ ,” she read out loud. “ _Adam’s space ranger boy toy is looking at me weird. Do you think somebody told him already that I’ve been sleeping with his ex?”_

“Yeah, he’s in the meeting,” Josh surmised.

“How is that going, by the way?” Caitlin asked curiously. “You and Curtis are very cute together too.”

“We’re not together,” Adam answered, shoving the catalog back into his mail bin. “We’re friends with benefits. We agreed that it was temporary and for stress relief only.”

And that it would end when Takashi came back. Adam had made it very clear to Curtis after Sam had come back that if Takashi really was still alive out there and he survived to make it home, the occasional play dates were over. They were currently broken up and not a couple, true, but this was a strange situation.

“Oh, hey,” Caitlin called to him, looking at her phone again. “He says to tell you the stray kid you two adopted keeps aggressively mispronouncing his name as "Katniss.”

“Tell him to bare his teeth to establish dominance,” Adam advised. “Just make sure Keith doesn’t have his knife handy first. No! Don’t really tell him that! Christ, you’ll get him murdered.”

Adam lunged across the desk as Caitlin started typing, pulling the phone out of her hands. He closed out the message app and handed it back to her, checking his watch.

“They won’t be in there too much longer, Keith doesn’t have that much patience. Once Curtis is out let him know I owe him a drink for his suffering and he can collect later.”

He grabbed his bag and left the main office, heading up the stairs to where the faculty offices were located. The print reader under the door plate reading “Captain Wolfe” scanned his hand and he shoved the door open, slamming it closed and leaning back against it with his eyes closed.

The inside of the office was a stark contrast to the sleek metal lines of the rest of the Garrison. Growing up in a Cherokee family had left its mark, even if he had found himself mostly drawn away from the ways of his people, and it could be seen in the quiet touches of nature here.

The tabletop fountain in the corner filled the room with the soothing sounds of running water, and the fresh scent of green hung on the air from the potted plants lining the windowsill. The carved wooden wolf his grandfather had made for him stood guard from a table behind his desk, a symbol of the ani'-wah'ya tribe to which his mother’s family belonged and from which they took their name.

Outside of this room—and the small home office in his apartment—he was a pilot and an engineer, a man of science following in the footsteps of his Brazilian nuclear scientist father. That bothered his mother a lot, he knew, that although she’d gotten custody in the divorce and raised her son in her family’s tradition, Adam had always preferred the modernity offered by her ex-husband. He had begun spending his summers in Brazil with his father as soon as he was old enough to start demanding it, in his fancy condo building with the latest gadgets and hundreds of TV channels.

Outside of this room he was fully engaged in all of the advances his field had to offer. Inside this room was a quiet bubble of peace where he could unwind and disconnect. He didn’t need to do so often, but it wasn’t exactly rare for the nitwits on this base to drive him up a wall.

Adam remained leaning against the door for a moment, listening to the bubbling sounds of water. He was a little bit stressed, to put it mildly, completely thrown from his daily rhythm. The last thing he had expected when he woke up this morning was to see Takashi strolling toward him across the quad as he left the building for lunch, and he was still suffering from the surprise.

Adam had known Takashi was out there. When Sam had finally gotten out of quarantine he’d come to see him, knowing he had been one of the people most affected by the Kerberos crash story. Not only had he been involved with Takashi, but he was also good friends with the Holts.

Which was why, looking back, it was no wonder “Pidge Gunderson” had gone through such lengths to rearrange “his” schedule to avoid being in Adam’s class. He still remembered one of the other professors coming to him to ask if he’d had some kind of altercation with the student in question, but Adam had never even heard of Gunderson before. He’d chalked it up to reputation, since he wasn’t known for being an easy teacher.

So Adam had known Takashi was alive, which was the first relief. And he had known that Keith was okay, which was the second. And then the third, that Katie Holt was no longer missing, nor were the two other cadets who had disappeared at the same time.

It was a lot to process. Adam had already been through mourning, he’d already fought through more than a year of guilt over how he and Takashi had parted ways. More than a year of wondering if things would have been different if he’d tried harder, of wondering if the way he’d left had impacted Takashi’s mental state on top of being ill and contributed to the crash.

He had been through the months-long endeavor of going through Takashi’s belongings, struggling to separate a man’s entire life into cardboard boxes. Boxes that had still been sitting in his apartment when Sam had turned up, locked away in the empty spare bedroom with the mental promise that he’d get rid of them ‘later.’

So to find out that a man whose life he’d thought was over, who he’d begun to pack away, was still up and kicking…it was a little bit of a shock.

So was finding out that Keith was all right. Now _that_ little brat, Adam was going to throttle him when he got the chance. Packing up and running away, after the meltdown he’d had that had gotten him expelled no less, Adam had been beside himself trying to track that kid down.

Adam opened his eyes and crossed the office, dropping his bag on the chair in front of the desk. He kept thinking back to the lawn, to the way his brain had momentarily shut down when he’d seen the familiar face walking toward him. He had often fantasized about what it would be like when Takashi came home, ever since Sam had brought him the little chip with his ex’s somber request to wait for him and give him another chance. He had expected awkward. He had expected uncomfortable.

He hadn’t expected the feeling of pure joy that had bubbled up in his chest when he’d seen Takashi walking toward him, alive and healthy and _home_. Or how strong the urge to throw his arms around him would be, or how natural it would feel to hold him again.

Adam wasn’t necessarily more patient than other people, but he was usually able to keep himself together. That wasn’t proving to be the case this afternoon, as he settled in to mark some tests only to quit three exams in and start pacing. He watered the plants, dusted the table where the wolf sculpture sat, and straightened the framed picture of himself, his mother, and his grandparents. He stopped to take the photo of himself and Takashi off the desk where it always sat in the corner, tucking it away in the drawer where it wouldn’t be seen.

Adam had gotten caught up in trying to fix the knots of the dream catcher that hung in his office window, a gift from an Ojibwe friend from summer camp when he was a teen, when the soft knock sounded at the door. It was so light he assumed it was a student and called for the visitor to come in, but when he stopped playing with the leather cords he turned to find Takashi standing awkwardly in the doorway.

Now, suddenly, things were starting to feel a little bit weird.

“…hi,” Takashi greeted, only taking a step inside and remaining close to the door, as if uncertain if he was really welcome.

“Hi,” Adam replied, leaving the dream catcher and turning to fully face him.

He couldn’t stop his eyes from going to the scar, the remnants of what had once obviously been a deep gash across his nose. Takashi had tried to keep his hair trimmed down but it was currently in the process of growing out a little from the last haircut, completely white now instead of just a patch of white in front as he had appeared in the video he’d sent.

Adam’s eyes went to the armor next, the silence drawing out and making Takashi start to squirm. He could see that it was well-used, scuffed and marked and chipped from God only knew how many close calls and confrontations. It wasn’t hard for a soldier to tell when a life had been lived very dangerously.

“You…look good,” Takashi tried.

“You look dead,” Adam blurted out.

Takashi winced and Adam backpedaled, realizing how that must sound.

“God, no I didn’t mean…shit, forget I said that!” He groaned, rubbing his face. “No, Christ. I mean you look exhausted, the circles under your eyes are awful. You’re a fucking mess, Takashi, I can tell just by looking you haven’t been taking care of yourself.”

“Well, I’ve been a little bit busy,” Takashi answered carefully, nervously running a hand through his hair. “There were other people I needed to take care of instead, so…”

“So of course you couldn’t be bothered to take any time for yourself,” Adam finished for him.

God, Takashi really did look a mess, too. He could fool everyone else, sure, but not Adam. Adam knew that he was standing so stiffly because he probably hadn’t properly relaxed in months and his muscles were probably in knots. He could tell by looking at Takashi’s eyes that he hadn’t been sleeping well for quite some time. He couldn’t tell because the armor he wore had gloves, but Adam was willing to bet money that once those came off he would find Takashi’s fingernails short, bitten down out of stress. Even ignoring the hair, his complexion was more pale than it had been in the past as well, probably due to the lack of proper sleep.

The man desperately needed to be forced to do himself some favors.

“Where is everyone staying tonight?” Adam asked. “I’m assuming Katie made a beeline for Sam and Colleen, and that the other two went to contact their families. What about you and Keith?”

“Keith is heading back to the ship,” Takashi answered. He gave up trying to pretend he felt great, leaning heavily against the door frame. “We found his mother, actually, he’ll be going back up to the ship where she is.”

“His mother,” Adam repeated, not certain he’d heard that correctly. They’d found Keith’s mother? In…space? “On…the ship.”

“Her name is Krolia, she’s a Galra,” Takashi nodded. “We have a Galra cruiser orbiting right now, she’s on it. Along with the current Galra emperor and a few thousand remaining members of a different, almost extinct alien species.”

He said it all so matter-of-factly, like that wasn’t even the weirdest shit he’d come across. Keith was half alien and they had some kind of freaking royal flag ship just outside the atmosphere, but apparently that was all just par for the course. The tabletop fountain really wasn’t enough right now, Adam wondered if Curtis had any extra Xanax.

He thanked every God he could think of that dealing with alien ships wasn’t part of his job. Heaven help the poor officers in the space program who were going to have to handle _this_ fresh level of hell.

“Okay, well, are you…are you going back to the…um…ship?” Adam felt like he was in some weird LARP, just casually asking his ex-boyfriend if he had to bounce soon to go meet up with his couple thousand alien friends.

“Oh, no,” Takashi ran a hand through his hair. “Actually, they offered to let me stay in the barracks. I kind of wanted to keep my feet on the ground for a little while.”

Adam nodded, taking a deep breath. This was a lot, it really was, not even the things Sam had told him had prepared him for this sort of thing to be an actual reality. But if it was a lot for him just to hear about, he could only imagine the kind of batshittery Takashi had actually lived through.

“I’m not going to let you stay in the barracks,” Adam decided, glancing at the clock on the wall. It was four-thirty, not terribly late but late enough that he could reasonably leave the base for the day. “You’ll spend the whole night with nosy cadets in your business.”

With the way he was standing there in full armor with the door open, it probably wouldn’t be long before they’d both be dealing with nosy cadets in their business if they didn’t do something about it. Adam took his keys out of his drawer and shouldered his bag, motioning for Takashi to leave the office and pulling the door tightly closed behind them.

“Come on.” He commanded rather than asking, knowing full well he wouldn’t be told no. Reaching up to hold the back of the collar of Takashi’s chestplate, he steered him forward down the hall toward the stairs. “I still have a screaming fit with your name on it and I don’t want an audience.”

Takashi amiably let himself be pulled along, exactly the same as he would have a few years ago. He really hadn’t changed aside from the extra wear and tear, contentedly returning smiles and waves to everyone they passed on their way to the parking lot. Caitlin was right though, he noticed as they walked. Takashi was an inch or two taller than he had been when he’d left, and dear God had he bulked up.

It was the hair color that threw Adam off the most. He already knew Takashi was prone to early lightening, one of the reasons he had kept his hair so short was that there were small patches toward the back of his neck that had started going white at around age twenty due to stress. But if the image of his ex talking to him on video with that larger white patch in the front wasn’t off-putting enough, the complete lack of color was startling.

Not that it looked bad, it didn’t. In fact, Adam didn’t think Takashi could really look bad if he tried. It was just very different.

It was also setting off the internal alarms Adam had promised himself that he would keep in control. Takashi was a grown man who had managed to keep himself alive this long even in the middle of an active, intergalactic war. He had almost violently fought back against being coddled or babied while sick and he absolutely hated to be treated like he was somehow vulnerable. But the lack of spring in his step and the tiredness around his eyes already had Adam falling back into his old habit of worrying.

“Is this all you brought with you?” Adam asked, giving the collar he still held a little shake as they reached his car. He was doing his best to keep his eyes level, to keep them from trailing down Takashi’s back to the point of his body that was clad in a very snug thermal suit and not covered by the armor. “Even though you were planning to stay in the barracks?”

“When you say it like that it sounds like I’m completely unprepared,” Takashi answered as Adam let him go. He looked down at himself, then at the helmet he held in his hands, then looked back up at him sheepishly. “This is all I brought.”

“A lot of things have surprised me today,” Adam murmured, opening the door for him. “That doesn’t.”

He waited until Takashi was in the car and closed the door for him, tossing his bag in the back before sliding into the driver seat. Takashi started to reach down to adjust the seat back but then realized he didn’t have to, looking over at Adam with raised eyebrows as he pulled on his seat belt so they could go.

“Boyfriend?” Takashi asked carefully.

“No.”

“Seat’s back kind of far,” he noted. “Way too far for you or a female friend. Looks like it’s set for somebody even taller than me.”

“You were gone for almost a year and allegedly dead for another before Sam told me otherwise,” Adam didn’t see any reason to lie, even if he wasn’t going to provide all the details. “Sometimes I had intimate company. No boyfriend.”

He was tempted to ask if Takashi had been seeing anyone while he was away. From what Adam could put together from Sam’s description and an actual transmission from Matt, this Team Voltron gig had made the lion pilots very popular in a lot of places. If Keith was half Galra, apparently there were aliens out there a human would find attractive.

But he didn’t ask. Even at this moment, they were still technically on a break. Takashi was allowed to sleep with whoever he wanted until they had what would undoubtedly be a very interesting talk and decided where they stood.

Takashi seemed to sense that question on the air, even if it was unasked. He avoided it by suspending conversation, turning instead to look out the window and watch the city go by. Adam let him, even taking the long way home so Takashi could spend a few more minutes soaking in the place that had been his home.

“You’re still in the same apartment complex,” Takashi noted when Adam pulled into a driveway and past the development sign. “Are you still in the same apartment?”

“I was planning to move about a month before you were scheduled to get back,” Adam answered, pulling into the same reserved parking spot he’d been using since they’d first graduated from the Garrison academy. “And then…you didn’t come back. So I didn’t bother.”

It was more of a rental townhouse than an apartment, a two-story row house with a basement and nice little back yard. They had started out as roommates here, when they were newly released out into the real world, and had ended as a broken up couple here a few years ago. Adam knew he didn’t have to give Takashi the tour as he let them in, stopping to remove his boots at the door.

There wasn’t much that was different here since the other pilot had left. Same furniture, same decor. It was still a cozy place, with its overstuffed sofa and throw blankets over by the fireplace that was currently off, and its built-in, full bookshelves lining one wall. Adam had changed the hardware on the kitchen cabinets last year, and added two more wind chimes to the garden at the back of the yard. That was pretty much the extent of the changes.

“It’s exactly the same,” Adam heard Takashi comment behind him as he went to hang his bag in the closet under the stairs. There was a soft scuffing sound and Adam looked over to find Takashi lightly kicking the small pile of cardboard boxes sitting by the door.

“You haven’t put any of these up?” Takashi asked, opening the top one and pulling out a string of pine garland. “Or is Christmas over? What’s the date here?”

What’s the date here. Takashi didn’t even know what time of year it was here, just that it was cold.

“It’s November 22.”

“Oh, right. The Christmas decorations don’t go up until Black Friday.”

Adam left that without comment, choosing not to admit that those boxes had been sitting there for two years. He hadn’t decorated this house for a holiday since Takashi had left, there was just no point when there was only one person living here.

“Nothing for fall up at all?” Takashi continued, not really having anything else to say as Adam went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. “Not having any family or anything over for Thanksgiving these days?”

“Well, Dad is foreign and doesn’t celebrate,” Adam pointed out, grabbing a bottle of water. “And Mom’s family isn’t really into celebrating colonization, for obvious reasons.”

“Right, shit, sorry,” Takashi said softly as Adam came back out of the kitchen. He was still just sort of hovering over by the decorations boxes, like he didn’t know where in the house he was allowed to go or if he was allowed to sit.

Adam didn’t blame him for not immediately remembering. Takashi was nervous, he said dumb shit when he got that way.

“Take off the armor,” Adam instructed, offering the bottle of water. “Leave it by the door, I’ll drag out an overnight bag for you to carry it in. Then come upstairs.”

“Okay, sure,” Takashi said uncertainly, taking the bottle. Adam didn’t give him time for comment.

He headed upstairs to the master bedroom, leaving the door open as he went inside. He stepped into the bathroom and bypassed the glass-enclosed shower, instead starting the water running in the tub over in the corner. He went back to the bedroom and shed his uniform jacket for the evening, switching out the tank top he wore under it for a t-shirt and pulling off his dog tags as Shiro appeared in the doorway.

He still wore the thermal suit, which was fine. It was the bulky armor Adam didn’t want him wearing through the house.

“Bathroom,” Adam ordered, running his comb through his hair. Takashi wandered past him to the bathroom door, still a bit slow and uncertain in this personal realm that was no longer his. Everything in this room now belonged to Adam, all of Takashi’s belongings were packed away.

“You want me to take a bath?” Takashi asked, looking at him quizzically.

“I want you to soak,” Adam answered, resting a hand on his back and steering him gently into the room. He paused and pressed the heel of his hand in between Takashi’s shoulder blades, feeling him tense up further. “You’re hard as a rock. When was the last time you just stretched out in some hot water?”

“The last time you made me,” Takashi admitted guiltily.

“Again, not surprised.”

Adam sighed and went over to the small cabinet in the corner where he kept the things he liked to use to reduce stress. He pulled out a stick of lavender incense and lit it on the holder, setting it on the tiled ledge above the tub. Before he turned the room over to Takashi, he leaned over and turned on the tub’s jets.

“Soak,” he ordered, resting a hand on Takashi’s shoulder and giving it a light squeeze. “And don’t rush. I know you probably want to talk, and we will…but let’s take care of you first. In fact, I’ll tell you when you can get out. And make sure you drink that whole bottle of water.”

He didn’t wait for an answer, closing the bathroom door behind him as he left. He felt surreal as he left the master and padded down to the other bedroom at the end of the hall, grabbing the key from where it rested above the door frame to unlock it and step inside. Everything about this evening so far, from coming home to practically forcing Takashi to slow down and relax, was a painfully familiar routine.

Adam flipped on the light, looking at the stack of boxes in the middle of the empty room and taking a deep breath. Takashi’s whole life was in these boxes, his parents had died in a car accident shortly before his diagnosis and his sister was busy with her own things, everything he owned had been here. Adam had painstakingly packed these boxes with the utmost care, and it was a new, strange feeling as he started cutting them open and searching through them.

He eventually found what he was looking for, picking through the clothes until he found what he wanted. He took everything down to the little laundry closet in the hallway and put everything in the dryer with some dryer sheets to freshen it all up, then went back down to the kitchen to take stock of what he had.

Making dinner required a short trip to the supermarket down the road, and by the time he returned it was dark and the temperature was dropping. Adam adjusted the thermostat and then pulled out the rice cooker that hadn’t seen use in years.

He moved with a mix of familiarity and muscle memory, his mind fractured in a thousand pieces as he went through the motions of cooking and setting the table. Everything he did were things he’d done hundreds, even thousands of times before, but somehow it all felt different. His preoccupation with his guest upstairs made everything go by quickly, and before Adam knew it he was finished.

He dug through a drawer in the kitchen, taking out the square ebony chopsticks set and laying it on the table as he passed, heading back upstairs.

The dryer had long since stopped, but there were still some traces of warmth on the clothes as he pulled everything out and folded it. Sweatpants, a t-shirt, some boxers, a pair of socks. He carried it all back through the master, knocking lightly on the bathroom door and letting himself in anyway when he got no answer.

Takashi was stretched out in the tub, the jets still going, his head settled back on a towel folded up to soften the tub’s edge. He was asleep, lulled away by what was probably his first chance to really relax somewhere safe in ages. Adam set the clothes down on the nearby shelf and moved over to sit on the edge of the tub, looking down at him.

Even in sleep, Takashi looked tired. He had often looked tired before, a symptom of constantly fighting his sickness, but this was different. This was a bone-deep weariness that practically seeped off of him.

Adam’s eyes slid over to Takashi’s arm, and he felt his jaw clench. Sam had mentioned a prosthetic arm in passing, but Takashi’s clothing in the video he sent had hidden it from view and so had the armor he had been wearing today. This was the first time Adam was really seeing with his own eyes the extent of the damage that had been done.

The arm wasn’t what Sam had described, this one was white and silver and almost pretty. Some kind of replacement, probably, but the end result was the same; it was a protrusion of metal and wire that met Takashi’s shoulder at a junction of terrible scarring. The original had not been attached with care, it had been a hack job at best and whoever had done it hadn’t given a damn about the trauma it might cause.

Warily, Adam reached out to touch it, letting his fingers run lightly along it. He traced it down under the water, down to Takashi’s fingertips and back. As he did the hand twitched slightly, sensing the touch somehow even if it wasn’t flesh and bone. Adam felt the faintest vibration run through it as it moved, the gears inside shifting to allow for motion. Inorganic. Alien.

“What did they do to you, baby?” Adam asked softly, letting the arm go to cup Takashi’s jaw instead. He ran his thumb lightly across Takashi’s cheek, taking in the sleeping face he’d honestly thought he’d never see again.

Things were strange. They were awkward. It had been years since they’d seen each other, there had been light years and a war between them. But sitting here in the quiet, having a few moments to himself to really evaluate what he was feeling about all of this, Adam decided there was one thing he was completely sure of.

He still loved this man.

“Hey,” he raised his voice a little, letting go of Takashi’s face to smooth his damp hair back. “Time to wake up. Come on, you need to eat something, then you can sleep some more.”

Takashi woke quickly, undoubtedly conditioned by the last few years to sleep lightly and be ready for anything. He sat up suddenly in the bath and Adam had to still him with a hand on his chest and make him take a moment to realize he was safe.

“It’s okay. You’re okay,” Adam assured him, leaning over to grab a towel from the pile on the shelf. “Here. And I got you some clothes, they’re over there.”

Takashi rubbed his face with both hands and looked down at the jets still running before everything seemed to click. He looked up at Adam, that sheepish look creeping over his face again as though he felt like he was invading the other pilot’s space.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep. How long was I in here?”

“A little over an hour. But it’s fine, you needed it,” Adam answered, smoothing back Takashi’s hair again now that he’d messed it up in his brief panic. “And I think you need more. So I want you to have something to eat and then go to bed.”

“I should’ve stayed at the barracks,” Takashi protested, taking the towel. “I just wanted to talk, I didn’t want to come here and be in your way.”

“You’re not in the way,” Adam insisted. “And we will talk…when I feel like you’re in the condition to. Come down when you’re ready.”

He hesitated, then leaned forward and kissed Takashi gently on the forehead before he rose and left the bathroom, going back downstairs.

He knew it would take some time before they were ready to eat, so he only now took the rice out of the cooker and mixed in the shrimp and vegetables. The nori came out of the package and he cut it down into smaller squares, softening it slightly with the steam from boiling water. Takashi came down the stairs just as he was setting everything on the table.

“Sit,” he ordered, patting the spot where Takashi had always sat, pulling out the chair on his way by.

The meal was fairly simple, basically sushi tacos. There was literally nothing exotic about it, Adam had decided when they’d first started dating that it was just easier than rolling actual sushi. He’d made it countless times on countless lazy nights, it was one of the meals with Japanese components that he actually liked a lot.

But the way Takashi stared at it now, one would have thought he hadn’t seen it in years.

Which, of course, he hadn’t. Adam could only imagine what kinds of things he’d been eating out in space, and honestly he didn’t want to ask.

“There’s some plain rice left in the kitchen if you don’t think you can stomach it,” Adam offered.

“No, it’s not that.” Takashi shook off his daze and picked up the chopsticks that sat by his plate, turning them over in his hands almost reverently. “I just figured you’d order a pizza or something, I didn’t mean to put you to work.”

Adam retrieved the teapot from the kitchen, having decided not to waste the boiled water he’d used on the nori, and poured them each a steaming cup before he finally seated himself.

“Eat as much as you want, there’s plenty,” he advised. “I just didn’t want to crowd the table.”

Takashi took the offer to heart. Adam only picked at his food tonight, focusing instead on the soothing warmth of the tea as he watched the other man eat. They didn’t really talk, there were no light topics of conversation that wouldn’t eventually lead to heavier subjects, and Adam had no interest in those yet. His only concern right now was Takashi’s well-being, giving him some of the care he always managed to forget to give himself.

Takashi went through half of the nori before he decided to just eat the rice mix, and Adam refilled the small serving bowl twice before he seemed to finally finish. Even so, Adam waited and watched until he was satisfied that Takashi had really had enough and wasn’t just claiming he had so he didn’t feel like a bother. When the meal did reach its end, he poured Takashi more tea and cleared the table.

He cleaned up the dishes with the efficiency of one used to doing so regularly. It only took him a few minutes to get leftovers into storage containers and the used dishes into the dishwasher. It was almost eight in the evening now, hardly late by anyone’s standards, but this was hardly a normal day.

“You really didn’t have to go through all that,” Takashi insisted when Adam returned to where he was sitting at the table, now collecting the empty teacups. These he just put on the counter between the rooms, to be dealt with tomorrow.

“I know I didn’t,” Adam assured him. “I don’t do anything unless I want to do it.”

He stopped behind the chair where Takashi sat, pausing for a heartbeat, then slid his arms around him to hug him from behind. Takashi seemed surprised for a moment, but then he relaxed into it and tilted his head back to look up at him.

“I missed you.”

“I missed you too. Come on, I want you to go to bed.”

Takashi actually chuckled a little, turning his head to look at the clock on the wall. “It’s not even eight-thirty.”

“I know, but we’re old now,” Adam finally smiled, lightly kissing Takashi’s upside-down forehead again. “Sleep and socks are the two things people in our age bracket always need. You can stay up late tomorrow, when I’m done with you.”

Takashi crinkled his nose a little, pretending that giving in was an ordeal, then let Adam pull him up to his feet. Adam did a quick walkthrough of the first floor to make sure everything was locked up and the lights were out, and they headed back upstairs. When they reached the top Takashi paused, looking down the hall.

“I can sleep in the other bedroom,” he offered. “I really don’t want to just show up here and suddenly be taking up all your personal space.”

“You can sleep in there if you want,” Adam agreed, looking past him to the now-unlocked door. “If you feel like putting the bed back together. It was taken apart to be moved.”

Takashi actually started to walk down the hall toward the other bedroom. Adam rolled his eyes and caught him by the shirt, pulling him back.

Caitlin was right again…Adam had picked this t-shirt because it had always been slightly big on Takashi, but now it was a bit snug.

“Don’t be an idiot, you’re not starting a building project right now,” Adam chastised, pulling him into the room they had once shared and closing the door. “I’m a grown up, I can handle having you in my personal space.”

Though, it was less about handling it than actually kind of needing it. Even if Adam didn’t need sleep as much as Takashi did right now, he _needed_ to curl up next to him and be close. He needed that contact, that assurance that Takashi was really here and okay.

Adam went into the bathroom for a little bit of privacy to change, and when he returned Takashi had done as he was told and flopped out in bed. He was lying face-down on the side that had always been his, the left side, over by the window. Adam tossed his phone on the bedside table and crawled into his own spot, stretching out as he turned off the lights.

As it turned out, he hadn’t needed to worry about what Takashi would think about him snuggling up against him. As soon as the room was dark he felt an arm go around him and the bed shift, and then a familiar, comfortable weight along his side as the other man laid half on top of him. Adam draped his arm over Takashi’s shoulders, lightly petting his hair.

Adam had this dream before, the one where Takashi came home and everything went back to normal. The one where they came home and curled up in bed and fell asleep whispering. The one that always ended in the morning, when he woke up to the sound of his alarm telling him he needed to get up out of his otherwise empty bed and head into work alone.

Adam hoped this wasn’t that dream. And if it was, if this was just another cruel creation of his overstressed and tired mind, he hoped this time he didn’t wake up from it.


	3. Early Morning

It was the change in light that disturbed Shiro’s sleep and made his eyes flutter open. No matter how safe and secure the life of his recent dreams, his physical body was still fine-tuned to respond to changes in his environment, and the shifting shadows sent up red flags that pulled him partially from sleep.

He sat up quickly, blearily looking around the room he didn’t quite recognize. The walls were dark gray, not the silvery metal of his quarters on the ship, and he couldn’t identify the light source. The bed he sat in was much more comfortable than what he was used to, the heavy comforter softer than the sheets he normally used.

It took him a moment to realize he wasn’t alone, and when he looked down at the man laying next to him he thought he was dreaming at first.

Bit by bit the night before came back, the memory of landing and coming back to Adam’s place. The reason he hadn’t been able to identify the light source was because it was the early morning sun, filtering in through blinds that hadn’t been closed all the way last night. God, when was the last time he’d seen the sun rise? What time did it even rise this time of year? He could barely remember how simple things like that worked here on Earth, and that was frustrating.

He spotted Adam’s phone on the bedside table and carefully leaned over to pick it up and check the time. Almost seven in the morning, and wasn’t it Friday? If everything was still about the same, Adam’s alarm should have gone off around five or six.

“I turned it off,” Adam mumbled, reaching up to take the phone out of Shiro’s hand without opening his eyes. He tossed it haphazardly in the direction of the bedside table, missing it entirely. “Go back to sleep.”

Shiro looked sleepily at the phone on the floor, then back over to the light beginning to stream in through the blinds. Then he turned to fall face-down into his pillow with a grunt, drifting quickly back to sleep.

* * * * * * * * * *

Adam got up shortly after seven. He had been awake since five out of sheer habit, lying with his eyes closed so he didn’t disturb the man laying half on top of him. Eventually Takashi did what he’d often done when they’d lived together, which was sit up half-awake until he was told to go back to sleep and then pass right back out, which allowed him to finally slip away.

He got up and closed up the curtains and blinds completely, keeping the bedroom dark, and pulled the comforter up over Takashi’s sleeping form before quietly grabbing a change of clothes and going downstairs.

Be dressed down on the first floor, in no hurry since he wasn’t due into the base today until this afternoon. The academy was closing for the week of Thanksgiving and he had a pre-holiday assembly for the older students on his schedule, a substitute would be taking care of his younger students today.

Even so, he still had a routine. Adam did his best to be quiet while he exercised, hating that it was too cold to do so outside and that he had to work out indoors. He was hanging by his knees over the side of the staircase banister, doing upside-down crunches against gravity, when a soft beep came from the gym bag he had put Takashi’s armor in.

“ _Shiro, you there?_ ” A familiar voice hailed. “ _Hey, Shiro! Come in, we have a little bit of a problem here._ ”

Keith.

Adam pulled himself up and flipped back over the banister, making his way to the gym bag and digging through it until he found Takashi’s helmet. He hadn’t given too much thought to the armor earlier, just shoved it in the bag and forgotten about it, but it had a fairly interesting design.

He wasn’t about to put the helmet on, he was sweaty from exercising, so he tilted it until he could see the small mic built into it.

“Good morning, Keith.”

Silence. But not the kind of silence that came from the mic being turned off, Keith was definitely still on the other end of the line. He could hear the rustle of cloth in the background.

“…heeey Adam,” Keith finally greeted. “Long time no talk.”

“Yeah, how about that?” Adam asked evenly.

“I…didn’t expect to be talking to you right now, either. Er, is Shiro around?”

“Takashi is still in bed.”

“Oh. Can you get him up for me?” Keith requested. “It’s kind of important.”

“No.”

Another pause. Keith had always been a little firebrand, completely irreverent, but wherever his attitude had taken him Adam had long since been there first. They were very similar in their temperament, and Keith’s unstoppable force had often found its match in Adam’s immovable object. Today was not going to be any different.

“If it’s so important, come by and talk to him,” Adam suggested, daring Keith to show his face here. “You remember the address?”

“…yes.”

“Don’t sound so enthusiastic.”

“Sorry. Yes.” Adam could practically hear the eye roll in Keith’s voice. “I’ll be there in about half an hour.”

“Tap on the door, don’t ring the doorbell. He needs some decent sleep.”

He waited for further response, but when he got none he put the helmet away and went quietly back upstairs. As much as Adam liked to take his time and relax when he was able to, more often than not he was a hot mess. He rolled out of bed fifteen minutes before he had to leave, took a five-minute shower that was over before the water even had a chance to warm, and threw on clothes before running out the door. Procrastination and lateness were practically his hallmark by now, in everything except his military duties. As his mother was so fond of pointing out, he’d even shown up two weeks late for his own birth.

A quick shower was the rule these days rather than the exception, so he was in and out and back downstairs with fresh clothes within fifteen minutes. He hadn’t really been expecting guests or he would have done actual shopping, but he managed to make do with what he had.

He was just flipping the first few pancakes on his griddle when he heard the light tapping on the door, pulling them off so they wouldn’t burn and making his way through the house to answer. Adam had no expectations when he opened the door but he was still surprised at what he found, both in the case of Keith himself and in the…woman behind him.

Adam crossed his arms and leaned against the doorway, blatantly eyeing Keith. The kid had grown a lot, he’d gotten taller and filled out to what looked like an actual healthy weight instead of the almost disturbing slenderness he’d had when he’d disappeared. He was still smaller than Takashi, smaller even than Adam, but he was definitely on his way to growing up. His hair was in desperate need of a haircut and there was a scar on his face that looked almost like it had come from a burn, and he was wearing clothes Adam assumed were of alien origin.

The woman behind him was about Takashi’s height, and very obviously not human. She was absolutely gorgeous, there was no question about that, but not human. She was almost as tall as Takashi and very vibrantly colored, from her skin to her hair to her eyes. She was regarding him curiously and had a hand on Keith’s shoulder.

His mother, perhaps. She was definitely an adult whatever she was, and her touch was clearly affectionate.

“So how was space?” Adam asked Keith. “Have fun?”

“Space was good,” Keith answered, squirming a little under his unblinking stare. It was a look Adam usually saved for his most irksome students, but Keith deserved it a little bit right now. “Did a lot of cool things. Met a lot of cool people.”

“Well that’s nice. I hope you gave them the courtesy of letting them know you were leaving before you came here to visit.”

“Adam, I’m sorry, okay?” Keith finally gave in under the weight of the stare. “I was just a dumb kid, I didn’t think anyone would miss me once Shiro was gone. I didn’t think you’d still care when he wasn’t around anymore.”

“Well then you at least got the dumb part right,” Adam answered, noting the way the woman’s hand twitched slightly on Keith’s shoulder when he said it.

He wasn’t making a very good first impression and he knew it. He was being standoffish and angry, which he personally thought he had every right to be. But he doubted Keith would have explained to his mother that he’d run away after being expelled and disappeared without telling anyone where he was going.

Adam pushed back away from the door frame and walked back into the house, leaving the door open for them to enter.

“Shoes off,” he reminded them over his shoulder as he went back to the kitchen, starting to toss the pancakes back onto the griddle.

Part of the problem was that Adam, much like Keith, wasn’t big on sharing feelings. Since he didn’t share them, it often took him a while to even confront them to understand how he felt about something. He’d had plenty of time to process the fact that Keith was alive because Sam had told him, but he had chosen not to do so and he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about it.

Relieved, obviously. He wasn’t some hateful monster, he was definitely relieved that Keith was okay. But also a little bit hurt.

Keith had never really warmed up to him the way he had to Takashi, and Adam had never pushed him to. They were simply too much alike for Keith to be comfortable, Adam understood that, so he tried to be supportive in other ways.

He would have Takashi invite the kid over for dinner on school holidays, and Adam would intentionally finish quickly and excuse himself so he didn’t put a damper on the other two. As juvenile as he and Takashi both were, the fact that things like fruit snacks and juice packs found their way into Takashi’s lunch bag were not because either of the adults had a taste for Gushers. Adam was usually the one who picked up and wrapped Keith’s Christmas presents, and picked up his birthday cards.

And he had tried to comfort him after news of the Kerberos crash had broken. He and Keith had both been godawful messes, and the aftermath of the crash was probably the only time in their history when they had not only spoken but even hugged. Adam had never been able to take Takashi’s place for the kid and he hadn’t tried to be a replacement. But he had _tried_ to be there for him in some fashion. Adam was the polar opposite of Takashi, sure, but he knew a little bit about what went through Keith’s head.

So when Keith had finally had a violent meltdown in another classroom and had used up his last chance, when his expulsion had been processed in the morning and he’d been picked up and taken back to the group home before noon, when Adam didn’t hear about it until that afternoon in the break room, he had known the clock was ticking.

Because if Adam had been in Keith’s place, he would have felt lost and run away too.

Keith was already gone by the time Adam had found the right address. Nobody at the group home seemed worried, and one of the teenagers there had straight up told him that the people in charge probably wouldn’t bother to look for him. He was seventeen and an orphan, the police had done absolutely nothing when Adam had reported a missing child because of his age and because there was no family to answer to. Adam didn’t exactly have standing, even if he had once been Keith’s teacher he officially wasn’t anymore.

Adam hadn’t even realized how heavy the weight of Keith’s disappearance had sat on his shoulders until it was lifted by Sam’s return.

He took the batch of pancakes off the griddle and put them on a small serving plate, carrying it into the dining room table and setting it in the middle. He grabbed the stack of plates and utensils from the counter, along with the butter and syrup, and put those beside it.

“Sit,” he commanded as he returned to the kitchen.

Keith and his mother looked at each other, then quietly took seats. Adam returned with the orange juice carton and some glasses, then took plates off the pile to put in front of them. He didn’t ask them if they were hungry or if they wanted anything as he served them before returning to the kitchen to put more batter on the griddle.

“So are you going to make introductions, or is this poor woman going to sit here awkwardly the whole time you’re here?” He asked.

Keith had the grace to look apologetic, which was something he hadn’t known how to be when he was younger. Perhaps his growth hadn’t merely been physical.

“Adam, this is my mom, Krolia. Mom, this is Adam.” There was no descriptor as to how he and Keith knew each other, and Adam knew that meant Keith had already told her something on their way. What he’d told her remained to be seen.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Adam came back around the separation between the kitchen and dining table, drying his hands before he offered one. “I know Takashi isn’t the kind of man who embarrasses people and probably hasn’t said much on the subject, but I don’t have that problem; you have an exceptionally talented son.”

“Thank you,” Krolia seemed to be a bit intrigued at being inside a rowhouse, but she was nowhere near as socially awkward as Keith. She paused in looking around to shake Adam’s hand and smile, looking over at Keith as he flushed slightly. “I’m discovering that more and more every day.”

He returned to the kitchen to flip the pancakes and take the bacon that was cooking out of the pan. A few minutes later he turned everything off and returned to the table.

“There’s fresh coffee in the pot on the counter,” he offered, bringing his own cup over from the counter before sitting down. He noted the way Krolia perked up at those words and assumed she was familiar with coffee from whatever time she had spent on Earth to produce Keith. “Mugs are in the cabinet right above the pot. Cream and sugar are here on the table.”

She made a beeline for the kitchen, and he understood the sentiment entirely. If he ever had to go years without coffee he would probably commit a murder. Adam believed in spending money on good coffee, and from the pleased noise that came from the kitchen he presumed the roast he’d used was more than acceptable.

“You got taller,” Adam noted Keith’s changes again while Krolia was otherwise engaged. “You’ve changed a lot in the last few years.”

“I was in a pool of time-warped space called the Quantum Abyss,” Keith said it with the same near indifference Takashi had used to describe the Galra ship orbiting Earth. “Mom and I were stuck there for two years, but for everybody else it was only about six months.”

“Oh,” Adam said dumbly, for lack of any better answer. Time warps in space. That sounded quaint. “That’s…nice.”

“I did get a dog there,” Keith added, giving in and starting to dig into the food on his plate. “A wolf, actually. He can teleport, which is pretty cool. Well, he hasn’t actually done it yet in the _real_ reality, but I think he can.”

Keith smothered his pancakes in way too much syrup as far as Adam was concerned, taking a piece of bacon as Krolia returned to the table. She was holding her coffee mug as if she’d just discovered religion, but Keith was looking curiously at Adam.

“So…Shiro’s still in bed?”

“As far as I know.”

Keith glanced over at his mother, and Krolia’s gaze flicked over to briefly meet his as if they both knew something Adam didn’t. Then her attention was on the sugar bowl, and Adam was sure he’d imagined the shared look.

“Late night, then?” Keith asked awkwardly.

“No, early night,” Adam assured him. “He was practically running on empty when he came to see me yesterday. He’s been in space for years, he just needed a chance to recharge now that he’s back on Earth. I didn’t think he’d get any rest in the barracks, and obviously he doesn’t have his own place yet so he crashed here for a night.”

“Oh.” Was it Adam’s imagination, or did Keith look almost disappointed? He had never seemed particularly interested in their relationship one way or another. “So he’s not moving back in here?”

“Probably not.”

That was the best answer. The safe answer. It was better than the truth, which was “I don’t know.” Adam had never been more uncertain about the answer to a question in his life than he was about that one. Things were very complicated, he was a very different person than he had been a few years ago. Takashi undoubtedly was as well.

“Is it because there’s another boyfriend in the picture?” Keith pressed.

“Are you his wingman now?” Adam asked.

“Not a very good one, apparently,” Keith admitted. “Sorry. He’s been talking about seeing you again, I just thought maybe…”

Keith was fishing for a statement on his feeling toward Takashi. But Adam hadn’t even had that conversation with Takashi himself yet, he certainly wasn’t going to talk about it with a child. Well, not that Keith was really a child anymore with whatever time-bending galactic voodoo had gone on out there.

Instead of answering he wordlessly speared another pancake with his fork and dropped it on Keith’s nearly empty plate, bringing his coffee mug to his lips and leaning back in his chair. Krolia had the grace to look embarrassed for her son’s nosiness but Adam pretended not to notice.

“So,” he said instead, grabbing a piece of bacon. “Tell me about this trip to space.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Shiro wasn’t really dreaming, which was probably why he slept so solidly for so long. On average he got about three to four hours of sleep at a time before his rest was interrupted by nightmares, which were as much a part of his nightly routine as actually laying down in bed. But whatever sparked those dreams, whether it was the alien ambient sounds of the Lions or various space ships, wasn’t present here. The only noise that sounded in Adam’s bedroom was the warm air coming from the heating vent as the heater went on and off to keep the temperature stable.

It was a very familiar noise, and not one associated with anything strange or foreign. He didn’t even notice it.

He woke up several times, but each time went back to sleep simply because he could. Nobody was yelling that he needed to train, no alarms were going off to alert that an enemy was attacking, nobody was telling him he was on a schedule. He had been left alone in a soft, warm bed, under a soft, warm comforter, with soft, fluffy pillows. The room was quiet and peaceful and smelled like Adam.

He just didn’t want to get up. So he didn’t.

Until one of his bouts of sleep was interrupted by someone’s presence. He felt someone near, heard the soft sounds of breathing breaking the quiet. It pulled him slowly into wakefulness, until he gave in and let his eyes drift open.

To see a face only inches from his own.

“Hey. We’ve got to tal—oh my God, stop screaming!” Keith exclaimed, grabbing Shiro and pressing a hand over his mouth. “Be quiet, I’m not supposed to be in here!”

“Keith!” Shiro exclaimed, shoving his brother away from him and rubbing his face with both hands. “Christ, you almost gave me a heart attack!”

Shiro sat up, finally letting the blanket fall away. He felt like he’d slept for a week, which to be honest was perfectly fine with him. He’d been through a lot, he deserved a real rest.

“What time is it?” He asked, letting his hands fall away from his eyes to finally look at Keith. “And why are you here?”

“It’s almost ten o’clock,” Keith answered testily. “Sorry to interrupt your coma, but we have a problem.”

“We always have a problem,” Shiro answered, stretching as he got up. Through the open door, the rest of the house smelled like food. He was tempted to go right downstairs, but a pile of folded clothes caught his eye. His own clothes, something besides Paladin armor or alien charity. “We’re pretty much doomed to never not have a problem. What is it? Is Allura okay?”

“She’s fine. Sort of. I don’t know if she’s fine. Blue’s not responding to her anymore, but that’s only part of the issue—” Keith was right on his heels and started to follow him into the bathroom. Shiro put a hand on his forehead and stopped him, gently pushing him back and closing the door in his face.

“I can hear you just fine from there,” he called. Keith was barely slowed down.

“That’s only part of the issue. The other part is that Black isn’t responding to me, either. I don’t know why, he’s under his particle barrier and it won’t come down.”

Shiro could hear him start to pace. He crossed the bathroom to the small linen closet where he was sure Adam still kept all the extra soaps and shampoos, and after a quick search was rewarded a new toothbrush still in the package. He opened it up and set it by the sink, splashing some water on his face before taking a look at the clothes.

“Black is a she, first of all,” Shiro corrected, feeling a flutter of happiness as he held up a pair of his own well-worn, broken-in jeans. “What did you do to her?”

“What did I…I didn’t do anything to him! Her!” Keith’s answer dripped with annoyance. “How are you barely even batting an eye at a time like this?”

“Is the world on the brink of exploding?” Shiro asked as he tugged on the jeans. A touch snug around the waist…a lot of his clothes were running small, he was going to have to shop.

“No, but…”

“Breathe. Relax.”

Keith didn’t say anything else, and Shiro finished dressing. The jeans weren’t too tight to be comfortable, and the t-shirt was one of his favorite old band tour shirts. But the icing on the cake was the leather jacket that Shiro picked up reverently, holding it up to inspect it. Perfect condition, just the way he’d left it, and as he pulled it on he found it still fit.

Shiro took a deep breath and stepped over to look at himself in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. What he saw was a man completely different from the one who had landed on Earth yesterday; the mirror showed him a man who loved motorcycles, and going to the bar after work, and standing too close to the speakers at concerts so he was nearly deaf the next day. It wasn’t the Black Paladin standing there, it was Takashi Shirogane.

And it felt so, so good to see him again.

Shiro loved being a Paladin. He lived for the thrill of adventure, he always had, and he had felt more alive fighting under Princess Allura’s command than he had for a long time. But over the last few years he had slowly become nothing _but_ a Paladin. Allura was the closest to him in age, the rest were practically kids and Coran was on the older side of the scale.

He had no real peers like the other Paladins, nobody who he really had that much in common with. There were no friends or bars or motorcycles or concerts, there was only the noise of the fight or the quiet of the Castle. Takashi Shirogane had slowly been disappearing, until all that was really left of any value to anyone was Shiro the Black Paladin.

It was a very lonely thing to be, sometimes.

Shiro opened the bathroom door and glanced over by the chair where he’d found the clothes. Adam had also pulled out his old boots, and he grabbed them and sat on the edge of the bed next to Keith to pull them on. Keith was glaring at him for not taking his problem seriously enough, but Shiro didn’t have it in him at the moment to care.

Not that he didn’t care at all, he just wasn’t ready to take on another Voltron problem so soon.

“So Blue’s not responding to Allura, and Black’s not responding to you,” he repeated as he finished tying his boots, standing back up and stretching. “Are any of the others having problems with their Lions?”

“I don’t know, they’re all still down here,” Keith answered. “Red, Yellow and Green are still out on the Garrison airfield. I haven’t called any of the others about them yet because they’re finally getting time with their families.”

The unspoken implication there was that Shiro was always available because he didn’t have a family. He knew Keith didn’t mean anything by it, and that technically that implication was true in a way, but it still served to highlight just how much he had come to be identified with his job as a soldier. Which was as much his own fault as anyone’s, he was the one who’d chosen ambition over relationships.

“Do Lotor and Allura think there’s any imminent threat?” Shiro asked as they headed downstairs.

There were three plates still out on the table with the remains of breakfast on them, a fourth one sitting empty at Shiro’s usual spot. There was an upside down bowl on the table, and he was delighted to find some pancakes and bacon tucked under it to keep warm.

“Nothing directly on the horizon,” Keith admitted. “No one in the empire knows about the Alteans yet, and the ones who Haggar split off to try and keep her hold on power haven’t been able to find us.”

“Is Sincline still operational?”

“Yeah, as far as I know.”

“Okay, then everything’s fine.”

Shiro took his food into the kitchen and put it in the microwave just to heat it a touch more. Keith stayed over by the dining table, leaning forward against the counter to give him a disbelieving look.

“Fine? How is this fine?”

“We’re safe for now, and Sincline can step in if the other three Paladins also have an issue with their Lions,” Shiro answered. “Keith, we’ve been on Earth for less than a full day. We still don’t even know what kind of defenses Sam has managed to put together with the Garrison, all we had was that two-hour debriefing on the state of the universe. I know you don’t like problems, but part of being a leader is knowing when to take a break and come back to it later. Sometimes, the best answers to questions don’t come until you have a rested mind.”

“Okay, okay,” Keith grumbled, sinking into a nearby chair. “An hour or two won’t kill me to wait.”

“Thank you. Did Adam go out?”

“No, he’s out back,” Keith gestured with his head and Shiro leaned back out of the kitchen, looking past the pantry and out the window of the back door to the yard.

Adam and Krolia were standing toward the back of the yard, looking at some of the things in the garden. Adam’s family members never visited without bringing a gift, and about six years ago they had all decided as one to start bringing things that could be used out in the yard. His mother tended to contribute wind chimes, and the collection was rather lovely by now. His grandfather always brought one of his wood carvings, and his father just bought a variety of things. The whole back of the yard was a small wonderland of music and nature and strange things like little dragon statues and fairy houses.

“They seem to be getting along,” Shiro noted.

“Yeah,” Keith agreed, making a face. “As soon as she realized Adam wasn’t above telling her all the things about me you wouldn’t they became best friends.”

Adam and Krolia turned away from the wind chimes and headed back to the house, laughing about something. Shiro ducked back into the kitchen as they came back inside, and Keith reached over to steal one of his pieces of bacon. He almost got the younger Paladin with his fork, but Keith was too quick.

“Oh, you’re up,” Adam noticed as he passed the kitchen, heading for the table. He started to clear up the dishes, and Krolia moved to help him. “Good. I have to get ready to go to work.”

“Aren’t you going in a little late today?” Shiro asked, moving out of the kitchen with his plate in hand to get out of the way. “It’s almost ten-thirty.”

“I’m not teaching today, I’m only attending the honors assembly for the upperclassmen,” Adam answered. He took the dishes from Krolia and started loading the dishwasher. “It’s at noon on the Friday before Thanksgiving break, remember?”

Of course Shiro remembered…now that he had been reminded. The honors assembly was to give out awards for perfect attendance and honor roll. This one would also be to give out a few special awards for students who had shown excellence in their whole Garrison academy career.

“Do you have to go?” Shiro asked, coming around to lean against the other side of the counter. “Keith’s having a problem with his Lion, I was going to head up to the ship. I thought you might want to come along and get a look.”

“I would love to, but yes, I have to go.” Adam glanced up from the dishwasher, giving him a little smile that disappeared when Keith leaned against the counter next to him. “I’m the speaker this time.”

The smile had been quick, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it curve of the lips, the kind of smile Adam had always reserved just for him. Life in the military wasn’t always completely serious, but there were plenty of times when they were expected to fall into line and be quiet. That little smile was the one Adam always gave him when they weren’t able to hold hands or be affectionate.

It sent a little tingle of happiness through him to see it.

“What if we waited until after the assembly?” Shiro suggested.

He wanted so badly to take Adam up to see the Galra cruiser, to show him the Sincline and introduce him to Allura and Coran and Romelle. Part of it was just that he knew Adam would think it was all so cool, but another part of it…another part of it was that maybe if Adam saw everything they’d accomplished he’d be less harsh in judging Shiro for leaving.

“I don’t think you want to sit through an honors assembly,” Adam protested. “You know how they go. Sanda gives the same boring speech about duty and honor, then I spit out a boring speech about how proud we are of our students, then I hand out awards. It’s not going to hold a candle to an alien space ship.”

“I don’t think it would hurt if we waited for you,” Krolia spoke up to agree with Shiro, coming to lean against the counter on his other side. “We don’t necessarily have to attend the assembly if you’re uncomfortable with us watching you speak. I’m sure there are plenty of things Keith and Shiro can show me in the city.”

Adam finished with the dishwasher and straightened up, looking at them all indecisively.

“It’s a really cool ship,” Shiro pressed. “The view is amazing.”

“Shiro is the co-Captain,” Krolia added. “He can make sure you get a tour of everything.”

“Okay, I see, _Mom_ is the wingman here,” Shiro heard Keith mumble to himself as he pushed away from the counter.

“I guess, if you don’t mind waiting,” Adam supposed. “And as long as there’s something you can do instead of standing around bored.”

“We don’t mind waiting,” Shiro insisted, trying not to give too big and stupid a grin at having won. “Just bring a change of clothes and you can change out of your dress uniform at the Garrison before we go.”

Adam finished up in the kitchen and headed upstairs. Shiro watched him go, still staring after him for a moment until he realized the other two were watching him.

“So…what’s going on with you two?” Keith asked once Adam was out of earshot. “He wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“To be perfectly honest, I can’t tell you anything either,” Shiro admitted. “It’s complicated, Keith. Our breakup wasn’t pretty, and I’ve changed a lot in the last few years. We haven’t talked much yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Adam was a different person too. Just the fact that he’s still speaking to me is a good sign, but it doesn’t mean all that much. It feels a lot like we’re right back at the beginning.”

“I hope it goes okay,” Keith said sincerely. “For now, the Garrison let us borrow a Jeep to get here after we used a striker to land. We’ll probably head back there and then decide where we want to go from there. Do you want to ride in with us?”

“No, you go ahead,” Shiro decided, looking up the stairs again. “And don’t wait for me when you go find something to do, either. I’m going to hang around and wait at the Garrison for him to finish.”

“Suit yourself.”

Keith had never been thrilled about assemblies, especially ones where he’d been forced to sit back and watch a bunch of his classmates receive honors while he was barely treading water. Shiro didn’t blame him.

He and Krolia left, and Shiro cleaned up his dishes. When he finished he went out into the yard, braving the chill to take a look at any new additions in the little oasis in the garden.

* * * * *

Sanda’s voice droned on, dull and uninspiring. Shiro had only been listening for about a minute and his mind was already wandering, his gaze drifting from the severe woman at the podium to the row of officers seated behind her. Next to Sanda’s empty chair sat Iverson, then Adam, then Curtis. Shiro wasn’t really sure why Curtis or Iverson were there, generally it would only be Sanda and the speaker on stage, but nobody else seemed to know either.

And technically, Shiro wasn’t supposed to be here. He had told Adam he was going with Keith and Krolia, but had remained here and sneaked in to stand in the back of the auditorium. So he couldn’t move toward the front to ask one of the other officers or teachers, or else he might be seen.

Krolia’s guess earlier at the apartment had been dead on the nose. Adam didn’t really like the spotlight, and he particularly hated being in it while people he knew were around. The point of his protests had been just what Krolia said, that Adam hadn’t wanted them there to see him speak. So Shiro had to remain invisible.

Which he was doing just fine at, and in a minute he might become unconscious on top of it if Sanda kept talking. She was a powerful woman who had the potential to inspire, but she had a terrible habit of looking down on people who weren’t on her level. Her attitude turned well-written speeches into dull affairs.

When she finished, there was a smattering of polite applause. Adam started to rise to speak and present, and Shiro perked up a little. He looked amazing in his dress uniform and Shiro was looking forward to hearing what he had to say, but Sanda motioned for him to remain seating.

“Before we continue with the honors awards, we have one small order of business,” she motioned as well for the students to quiet. “Commander Iverson?”

Iverson rose as Sanda seated herself, leaving Adam looking briefly confused. Then he suddenly seemed to understand what was going on, his eyes widening and his head tilting slightly to try and look questioningly at Curtis. Curtis refused to meet his gaze, respectfully watching Iverson with a faint smirk on his face.

“As you all know, promotions of military personnel are reasons to celebrate,” Iverson said into the microphone. “It’s up to the promotee whether to hold a ceremony or not and some opt not to. But a promotion ceremony isn’t just about the officer being promoted, it’s about the institution in which he or she performs.

“A recent promotion went into effect this morning, and the promotee decided he didn’t want any kind of ceremony. But since this is a gathering to observe and honor excellence, there’s perhaps no better place to give you an example of the kind of soldier you all have the potential to become. In keeping with Captain Wolfe’s request to not have a ceremony, I’ll simply ask him to stand and be recognized as Major Adam Wolfe.”

Adam rose, remaining remarkably serene for someone Shiro knew was probably dying on the inside. The cadets in the auditorium applauded as Curtis rose to pin Adam’s new insignia to his uniform, some of them even standing and whistling.

Shiro felt a small pang of…he wasn’t sure what. It was often someone important to the promotee who did the pinning at promotion ceremonies, wives or children or sometimes good friends. Shiro was well aware there was no reason for him to expect to be involved in any way, but he still felt a little bit sad that he hadn’t been. His choice of Kerberos had taken him away from here, he had missed out on all of the achievements that had brought Adam this far.

Rather, Major Wolfe. Even through his regret, Shiro couldn’t help but be proud. In the beginning it had been Adam being left behind as Shiro’s overachieving had seen him rising quickly through ranks and breaking records, now he was standing here watching Adam officially surpass him in rank.

The cheering died down as Iverson and Curtis sat back down, and Adam motioned for everyone to calm down. He moved to the podium, watching the cadets in the crowd with a little smile as he waited for them to quiet.

“ _My battery is low, and it’s getting dark_ ,” Adam quoted once the room was silent, reading a note card he’d he’d brought with him to the podium. “In February of 2019 the Galaxy Garrison’s predecessor, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, officially declared the death of the Mars Experimental Rover _Opportunity_ and released this phrase to the public as her final words.

“ _Opportunity,_ or Oppy as she had been called, didn’t actually speak this phrase. _Opportunity_ was a machine, a complex invention of wires and microchips, without thoughts or feelings. It was programmed to go into temporary bouts of hibernation, its last transmission before it’s final sleep cycle was a readout of its power levels and facts about its environment. A dust storm covered its solar panels, leading to a lack of power and the rover’s eventual demise.”

Adam stepped out from behind the podium, moving to the edge of the stage in front of it. He abandoned any note cards and stood with his feet planted and hands folded behind his back, exuding a comfortable confidence Shiro knew he hadn’t had before. He had an impressive presence on the stage, and spoke loud and clear even without a microphone.

Shiro could see Sanda glance over at Iverson in faint disapproval, her preference that all things remain strict and by the numbers was well known. She didn’t like that he didn’t stay respectably behind the podium and keep a disconnect between himself and the “lower ranks,” but while it might have been one of her peeves she seemed to get over it quickly enough.

“ _My battery is low, and it’s getting dark_ ,” Adam repeated, looking around the auditorium. “These are poetic words, human words. They evoke visceral, deep human feelings. We are aggressively social creatures, we’ve always wondered if there were others in the universe. Humanity is a young species, constantly calling desperately up to the stars for some reassurance that we are not alone. Billions of lonely souls on a lonely blue planet in a lonely corner of a quiet galaxy.

“ _My battery is low, and it’s getting dark_. These words spread across social media like wildfire. People who had no interest in science felt a very real loss and cried very real tears at the idea that any human creation would meet its end alone in the dark. Because at our core, humanity has always known what it feels like to be alone in the dark.”

He started to pace slowly, keeping to the edge of the stage. His movements were measured, graceful where other officers often had a heavy, marching sort of style. Adam’s step was light, his voice calm and almost hypnotic as he spoke to the cadets in the room instead of at them.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that he was just mindbogglingly gorgeous, or that he filled out the formal uniform with shining medals on display perfectly. At least, that was Shiro’s opinion.

“ _Sojourner_ , a word that means “Traveler”. _Opportunity_. _Spirit_. _Curiosity_. These are the names of the four Mars rovers you can see on display today at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. These names represent some of the most fundamental aspects of the human drive for discovery. They were chosen from an essay contest, from submissions made by students. Children chose these names for our research vehicles.”

He stopped pacing at the middle of the stage, front and center. He wasn’t exactly the biggest man on stage, but he commanded attention. It was so very different from the Adam Shiro remembered, the man who preferred peace and quiet and actively avoided the spotlight. But it was a nice change, and it suited him.

Or perhaps it wasn't really a change. Perhaps this was just the type of man Adam was meant to be...when he wasn't constantly exhausted from taking care of a sick boyfriend in his free time.

“The phrase ‘children are our future’ has become a bit of a cliché, but it remains an absolute truth. Not only in the sense of continuing our species and legacy, but because the fires of optimism burn most brightly in youth. All of you are here today because you’re exceptional individuals. The Galaxy Garrison is a prestigious and competitive institution, with extremely high requirements and grueling specialty programs. All of you here are smart, strong, and studious. But all of you are sitting in front of me today because you also have something else absolutely necessary to succeed here. Something more important than good study habits and high test scores. You have passion.

“Within you all beat the same hearts as the men and women who first dared to say that a human being could walk on the moon. The same souls as those who sent machines to the stars with names, and translated their transmissions into human words. The same empathy as those who took the first steps on Mars for hands-on research and decided that future missions were required simply to bring our robots home. Exploration and discovery are not only about science. They’re not merely about math or physics. They’re about passion. They’re about heart, and soul, and empathy.

“ _My battery is low, and it’s getting dark_. Many of our research machines have finally been brought home and laid to rest. They’ve done their jobs and made us proud, and are no longer alone in the dark. Humanity is no longer alone in the dark. We now know that there are others out there, and your generation will be the first to truly set foot among the stars. You will be representatives of all the heart and soul and empathy that humankind has to offer.

“These are things humanity fights for. They’re things humanity is willing to die for. In a perfect universe you’ll all live many years doing the former and never have to do the latter, but you’re here because you’re willing to do both. For that, and for all the passion you exhibit, for the _Opportunities_ you’ll build, for the light that you’ll bring, I salute you. We all salute you.”

Shiro didn’t know if Adam regularly spoke at assemblies these days or if he was simply a favored teacher, but as he headed back over behind the podium the cadets in the room registered their approval with enthusiastic applause. Adam smiled slightly, but motioned with one hand for them to tone it down. It took another moment, but the kids finally quieted.

“Keep that enthusiasm for your fellow students who are about to be honored today,” Adam requested. “Please rise, and advance to the podium when I call your name.”

There wasn’t much more of interest after that. Adam went through the honor roll and excellence awards, then Sanda gave closing remarks. The cadets were excused, since upperclassmen were given today as a half day, and Shiro stood back out of the way as the noisy students spilled past him to the hall.

He leaned back against the wall, watching Sanda and Iverson leave and only Adam and Curtis remain on stage. They were laughing and joking now that their superiors were gone and the cadets were leaving, and it was such a surreal thing to see after the things Shiro had experienced.

When the crowd was thin enough, Shiro made his way down the aisle to lean against the stage and look up at the other two men.

“Major, huh? When were you going to tell me you got promoted?”

“You didn’t ask,” Adam answered. “Does it matter? Were you planning to start calling me by my title?”

Shiro almost made a suggestive joke about screaming Adam’s title out under intimate circumstances, but he knew they were no longer at that point. It also felt kind of weird, to even be thinking explicit things about one man while another who he had dreamed about being with was standing right there.

“Of course it matters,” he said instead. “You heard Sanda, it’s not always just about the promotee, it’s about the people around them. If you’re not going to have a ceremony, you should go out and celebrate.”

He was going to suggest that Adam let him take him out, but he was interrupted by his name being called by a panicked teenager bolting into the room. Shiro closed his eyes and sighed before looking over his shoulder.

“Hey, Lance,” he greeted as Lance skidded to a stop in front of him, bent over and panting. “Calm down. Where’s the fire?”

“Where’s Keith?” Lance asked breathlessly. “I have an emergency!”

“There’s no Sprite in the mess hall soda machine?” Shiro asked hopefully, even though he thought he might already know what the issue was.

“No, worse,” Lance moaned, having obviously not heard a word Shiro had just said. “Red’s particle barrier is up and she won’t let me in! …nice jacket, by the way.”

Shiro looked up at Adam and Curtis, leaning down with his artificial arm to lift Lance up off the floor where he’d collapsed face down in the aisle in an overdramatic display.

“I have to go look into this,” he sighed. “Want to get changed and then come meet me on the tarmac? We still have to go up to the ship eventually.”

“Sure.” Adam nodded to Lance. “Does he need a paper bag to breathe into?”

“No, overexcited is just a thing he does,” Shiro assured them, setting Lance on his feet. “Come on, let’s go see what’s going on.”

As he followed Lance out of the auditorium, Shiro couldn’t help but feel tired again. It was always something, and he somehow always ended up in the middle. He wasn’t an active Paladin anymore, but they still kept coming to him. He wasn’t the actual Captain of the Galra ship, but people kept coming to him anyway. He felt like he was getting none of the glory or adventure but more than his fair share of responsibility.

It made him feel a little bit guilty to think like that. Fighting this war wasn’t about glory or adventure, it wasn’t about piloting a Lion or leading a ship. He was just feeling like he didn’t have a place anymore, that was all, it would pass once he found where he belonged again. He was only twenty-six, it wasn’t unusual to feel a bit lost now and then.

As they left the auditorium he stopped and glanced back again, at the two men finally leaving the stage and talking as they walked together toward the exit.

He knew at least one place he wanted to be, but whether or not he still belonged there remained to be seen.


	4. I Love you

Lance was a dramatic young man, just like Adam remembered him being. He stood out in memory for his theatrics, not just his boasting but also his telenovela-level performances whenever he was even slightly inconvenienced. All of the teachers knew him, he had an attention disorder and sometimes needed to actively be kept on task.

Now he was flying a hundred-ton intergalactic war machine. That was an interesting, and slightly terrifying, turn of events.

“What do you think is going on?” Curtis asked as they left the auditorium, heading back through the hallway toward the offices. “Kid seemed panicked.”

Curtis was walking beside him but keeping a more respectful distance than he would have a few days ago. From part-time lovers to completely professional at the flip of a switch. Adam appreciated it.

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. Curtis wasn’t going to tell anyone anything, Adam saw no reason to not share what he knew. “Keith came by the house this morning, Takashi said he was upset. He’s having trouble with his Lion too.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“I don’t know. The technology is very advanced, they seem to think the ships are sentient.” Adam didn’t personally believe that, it was more likely that the lions were just so advanced their current owners simply didn’t understand the algorithms or criteria they used. “That they actively choose their pilots. Now at least two of them aren’t being accepted by the ships anymore.”

“Maybe the lions are just tired and don’t want to do anything,” Curtis suggested.

“They’re space ships, they don’t get tired.”

“I don’t know. I was there when they landed,” Curtis said with a faint shrug. “I saw the way those things moved, they looked like they were alive.”

“Space ships also aren’t alive,” Adam said. Did he really need to point this out? Surely Curtis of all people wasn’t honestly suggesting these things had sentience. “They’re probably just programmed to move that way.”

“Then their programmers were really extra. It was a lot of motion not necessary for flight, the kind of stuff that takes up more power than a war ship should be wasting.”

“Their programmers were alien, for all we know they worshipped a lion-like animal and felt that the ships should pay proper homage,” Adam reasoned. “Or maybe they have an unlimited energy source and could afford to add realism without sacrificing efficiency.”

“Or maybe they’re giant, living metal lions,” Curtis answered. “Stop sucking all the wonder and joy out of everything.”

“Curtis, I have some more bad news,” Adam sighed, slowing down and resting a hand on Curtis’ shoulder. He gave his friend a sad look. “It’s about Santa Claus…”

“You’re a monster,” Curtis accused, reaching up to smack him in the head with the folder in his hand. He pulled away and turned down the hall in the direction of his own office. “Go get changed for your play date. After you’ve seen those things in action and you’re ready to apologize, I’ll be in my office.”

“We’ll talk about it this weekend,” Adam offered, backing down another hallway in the opposite direction. “Over pizza and beer.”

He let himself into his own office, glad that he wasn’t being held up by further conversation. As much as he would love to hang around longer and talk about what was going on with other adults, he was more interested in seeing these lions for himself. He had been in a meeting when they’d landed, an important one concerning his training of pilots for the new MFE line of fighter jets, and then had busied himself with first his classes then Takashi.

But the lions were all everyone was talking about, and he couldn’t help being curious. He was an engineer by training, currently working toward a doctorate, and all of the alien technology he’d come across so far had been fascinating. But it had also been only partial, either in the form of crashed light aircraft or the pod Sam Hold had arrived in. Even the schematics Sam had on the drive he’d brought with him hadn’t been anything like seeing the real thing in action.

“Osda svhiyeyiditlv,” he murmured absently to the wolf statue on the table as he set down his notecards and uniform cap beside it. He stripped off his formal uniform jacket, draping it over the back of his desk chair and pulling the gym bag out of the closet to get his change of clothes.

He wasn’t really sure what he was expected to wear onto an alien ship, Takashi had given no indication whether he should dress formally for meeting aliens. But considering that the other man seemed to be perfectly comfortable heading up into space in his motorcycle clothes, Adam was going with casual attire.

The tan fatigues, combat boots, the same olive-green bomber jacket he’d been wearing since graduating the academy. He was technically a representative of the Galaxy Garrison as long as he was enlisted, no matter where he went, so as tempting as jeans and sneakers were he held off on that.

He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a chain with dog tags, putting it on and dropping them down under his shirt along with the other set that sat there. His biggest question was what to do with his firearm, whether he dared to go meet these potential Earth allies unarmed.

Adam didn’t. He switched to the low back holster that sat comfortably under the jacket, clipping his gun into that before strapping his bowie knife to his calf under his pant leg. Takashi had always been the more trusting one of the two of them, but Adam was never going to be on his level.

He took everything out of his wallet except his ID and some cash, putting the rest of it away in a drawer with his keys. His office door would open by code or handprint, it was safe to leave it all here.

When he was finished he made the trip through the Garrison, away from the administrative wing in the center and off to the airfields. He had access to go this way, unlike lower ranking soldiers who had to go around the building and check in at the office. These days, this section of the building required a lot of clearance thanks to the sensitive alien technology that had been brought back by Sam, and the current projects underway to integrate them with Earth tech.

Adam passed down a narrow second floor hall and paused halfway, looking out the window and down into the hangar below. The monstrous hull that nestled down there took up half of the space, its inner supports and workings exposed in places like a massive beast with its insides spilling across the hangar to engulf the small army of engineers. Sparks flew from welding and even up here the sounds of muffled shouts were heard as the Garrison’s biggest project continued without pause for the holiday.

The IGF Atlas. Earth’s first space-worthy vessel bigger than a shuttle. Earth’s first intergalactic ship in history, and he had a hand in building it. When it was completed, he would be one of three soldiers leading permanent fighter squads from its hangars.

A lot had changed since Takashi had left.

Adam had always been quieter in his ambitions than the others around him. He had never not been ambitious, one didn’t become a fighter pilot for the Garrison if they weren’t, but he had never been loud and colorful about it. He was an exceptional pilot, second only to Takashi Shirogane, but he didn’t get the same high from chasing glory and adventure. He preferred working the military from within, having a hand in teaching new recruits and being involved in the designs of new equipment.

Next to his more excitable flight partner, Adam had tended to fade into the background. He’d stepped back to take a support role in their relationship, which hadn’t bothered him to do, continuing to teach and study while Takashi broke records and drew eyes.

And then Takashi was gone, and those eyes had turned to Adam. And since there was nobody else who needed his support, Adam had turned back to his ambitions.

Being an engineer gave him clearance for lower level projects, but studying and working directly under Sam Holt got him access to everything. Being a teacher put him on the front lines of the current talent, which helped him know exactly who to choose when it came to building the group of young pilots who would be under his command. Adam had never even bothered to apply for one of the competitive space missions Takashi had constantly gone after before, but now he was going to be an officer on Earth’s first ship designed specifically to leave the solar system.

He was a very different person than he had been a few years ago.

The door at the other end of the hallway opened and a young man and woman came through, slowing to a stop when they reached him and giving him a salute.

“Griffin. Risavi,” Adam greeted. “Last chance to turn in your packets before break.”

“That’s where we were coming from, sir.”

James Griffin was a stiff kid, the kind who followed all the rules, always. He was constantly chasing the records Keith had set when he had still been attending the academy, and having his main rival return as a General of his own intergalactic army at the same age was really rubbing James the wrong way. Nadia Risavi was more lax, leaning against the glass after she saluted to look down at the work being done below.

They were two of four so far who had special clearance to be in this area. Two of the four young pilots who would be flying with him.

“You have finals soon?” Adam asked. James and Ina Leifsdottir had graduated from the high school level last year, he was now in his first year at the university level. Nadia and Ryan Kinkade were still in high school.

“Second week of December,” James nodded. “I’m feeling pretty good about them.”

“You should, your grades have been excellent. But try to relax over your Thanksgiving break,” Adam advised. “School only tells you that you need a lot of different subjects to be a well-rounded soldier, but you need to know how to have a little bit of fun, too.”

“Don’t worry, our parents are enlisted so we’ll both be on base over the break,” Nadia chirped, leaning on James’ shoulder now and intentionally pushing him off balance. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t spend the whole week staring at textbooks.”

“Good. Just don’t end up in jail,” Adam requested. “And hurry up and get out of here, before somebody finds you something to do.”

James started to salute again but Nadia grabbed his arm and pulled him off, calling back a Happy Thanksgiving to Adam before they disappeared down the hall and through the opposite door.

In addition to their regular schooling, the four pilots also had a specialty program they were going through under Adam. He was teaching them the ins and outs of the MFE fighter jets he and Sam had been building, making sure they knew the planes inside and out. They were the first who would be piloting Altean/Earth hybrid fighters outside of a planetary atmosphere, and were undergoing rigorous lessons in physics, mathematics, and communications. The packets the two had dropped off were the semester projects they had to turn over to Sam so he and Adam could grade them over the break.

Adam continued on his way, through the door at the end of the hall that would let him cut through the labs and offices. He already knew Sam wasn’t working today, he and Colleen were likely smothering Katie with attention, so there was no point in dropping by.

He left the high clearance area out the opposite side, which let him out into the wing used for pilots and their commanding officers. There were a handful of offices, some locker rooms, the repair hangars, and the training rooms for mechanics. Farther on was the tarmac where the Garrison base’s current fighter jets were parked and waiting for training exercises. And beyond those…

Adam had to stop walking only a few steps out the door. He had assumed everyone who had described the lions to him had been exaggerating to an extent, too taken with the advanced technology to accurately remember size. But these things were huge, towering over everything the Garrison had except the IGF Atlas. And from what he’d heard from others, the black lion that wasn’t present was even larger than the yellow one, which already towered over the green and red ones.

He started walking again, his eyes glued to the machines across the runway, gaze moving from joints to jaws to outline. These ships were an exercise in mechanical musculature, not just some clunky copies made in the form of giant cats. Separate claws graced each of the paws and the limbs were anatomically correct, they even had tails that were shaped on the end as if they had tertiary weapons.

“So what do you think?”

Adam nearly jumped out of his skin as Takashi appeared beside him, almost taking a swing that would have left a nice sized bruise if it landed. Takashi must have been standing off to the side, blocked from view by one of the jets and unseen by Adam as he’d passed.

“What are you doing sneaking around the planes?” Adam demanded. “For the love of God, make some noise when you’re walking.”

“Sorry. I was waiting for you and Keith and I guess I got nostalgic,” Takashi answered. “I just thought I’d take a look at my old plane. Who’s flying it now?”

“I don’t know, I don’t really keep track,” Adam lied, glancing back over the planes lined up. “Things got busy, I got distracted. You know how it is.”

“Yeah,” Takashi glanced back at the planes again and started walking, looking at each as they passed. They were all identical from the outside, nothing to really separate one from the other, but he did exactly what Adam did not want him to do and stopped in front of one of the lead jets. “Here she is.”

He started to climb up on her wing, and Adam made a mad dash to grab him by the ankle and pull him back down.

“What are you doing? You can’t climb on that, you’re not an authorized pilot anymore.”

He knew he must sound like a complete asshole, and the look Takashi gave him only confirmed that. Adam heaved a sigh and climbed up on the wing, maneuvering past him and opening the canopy.

He reached in and grabbed one of the pictures that was clipped on the control console, a picture of the two of them after hours during basic training, and tucked it into the pocket of his fatigues before Takashi could see it.

“Fine, there,” he said, hoping it was clear that he was annoyed as he dropped back down on the ground.

Takashi gave him a quizzical look, then climbed back up on the wing and stepped into the cockpit, dropping down into the front seat.

It was a vision right out of memory. He’d sat in that same seat once, waiting for his copilot to join him, reciting out weather statistics and flight itinerary detail through the radio while his helmet sat in his lap. His hair had been black then, his face a little less care-worn. Adam saw him pull down one of the other photos from where it was tucked behind the edge of the compass casing. He held it up, a photo of Adam at his college graduation with his very proud father.

“You’re flying my plane?”

Adam didn’t know how to read his tone of voice. It wasn’t accusatory or anything, and he didn’t seem upset.

“I’m flying my plane,” Adam corrected. “You transferred to the space division for Kerberos, remember? You’re an astronaut now, not a fighter pilot.”

Takashi started to put the picture back, but Adam held up a hand, snapping his fingers lightly for him to hand it over. Takashi sat up on his knees in the pilot seat, resting his arms on the side of the plane and letting him take it.

“And it’s not my plane for much longer anymore either,” Adam added.

“You’re transferring?” That tone Adam knew, it was mild surprise. “But you love being a pilot.”

“I know. And I’m also transferring to the space division,” Adam said as Takashi climbed out of the plane.

“Are you finally applying for exploratory missions?” Takashi asked, his face practically lighting up. “I knew you’d get there eventually. I wish you were ready for it sooner, you would have been great on that Mars mission with me.”

“I can’t talk about it,” Adam said honestly. Just because he had access to the Atlas project didn’t mean he had leeway to talk to anyone he wanted about it. “You’ll probably hear more from Sam and Admiral Sanda when you have a full debriefing.”

“Right, right. Security clearance.”

This entire exchange so far was almost painful. They were standing in the same spot they’d stood together so many times, by the same plane they’d flown together for hundreds of flight hours, but nothing else was the same. There was a huge, gaping hole where familiarity and comfort had been, and Adam felt what he would almost describe as a sensation similar to homesickness.

At least last night he’d been able to pretend, to go on autopilot and put off thinking too deeply about the situation. Takashi, the man who always took care of everyone else, had needed a little bit of care himself and Adam had focused on that. But in all honesty it had been several years since they’d spoken, and while it didn’t exactly feel like they were strangers there was definitely a disconnect now.

They started walking to the lions in silence, and Adam focused on his feet as he walked. He thought about the dynatherm connections he had to work on for the MFE fighters, about the unit on high altitude weather he would be teaching at the beginning of next semester, about the tarmac needing resurfacing soon…anything to not dwell on the awkward silence that had settled between the two men as they walked.

Lance was sitting on the ground when they approached the huge metal beasts, with Hunk Garrett sitting next to him and patting his back sympathetically.

“It’s probably just some kind of mix-up, buddy,” Hunk was saying reassuringly. “Or maybe you said something that made her mad, you know she’s got a temper.”

“Maybe he’s mad because you’re calling him a “her,” Keith called from behind them.

Adam glanced back to find Keith and Krolia, approaching from the direction of the lobby near the airfields. They had probably been right behind him and Takashi for about half the walk across the air field; Adam wished they’d interrupted sooner and saved him from the awkwardness.

“All right guys, everyone to me,” Takashi called, waving an arm for them all to come over. Lance and Hunk hauled themselves up from the ground and Keith came closer. “So go over this with me. When did it all start?”

Adam took a few steps back, to stand by Krolia. He looked up at the lions, marveling at them from up close.

“Mom and I got up this morning to come back down here, but when we went to the hangar Black wouldn’t respond to me,” Keith answered. “His particle barrier is up and he…I mean, she won’t move. I went to talk to Allura and she told me she had a feeling Blue wasn’t going to respond to her either, but she wouldn’t give me any details. She just said we’d have to talk about it when everyone was back.”

“Me and Hunk came in together this morning,” Lance added. “We weren’t even going anywhere, just checking in on the lions. Yellow is answering Hunk just fine, but Red put her barrier up as soon as I got close.”

Takashi looked between Keith and Lance, who also looked at each other. They all shared a moment where they seemed to have a dawning idea of what was going on, but none of them said it out loud. Takashi closed his eyes almost tiredly, as if he couldn’t believe whatever was happening.

“What’s wrong?” Adam whispered to Krolia. “What kind of trouble would they be having with the ships?”

“The lions choose their pilots,” Krolia answered, echoing the same strange claim Curtis had made earlier. “Keith’s and Lance’s lions aren’t letting them inside, and it’s possible Princess Allura’s isn’t either. We don’t know why.”

“They’re machines, they don’t choose anything,” Adam answered. “Don’t you know enough about how they work to disable the particle barriers from the outside?”

There was a sound of metal moving, but not the loud screeching of rusted or unused joints. It was loud enough to call attention but not deafening, and Adam certainly hadn’t expected one of these huge things to move that quietly. But when he turned around that’s what he found; the yellow lion had lowered its head to his level and its eyes were glowing.

Adam didn’t know what was making it move or how the program worked, but he knew ships. He was not going to be put off by whatever artificial intelligence this thing had that was making it react to him. The lion was majestic as hell, that was for sure, and certainly imposing, but it was still just metal and wires. He stood up to his full height and crossed his arms, looking right back at it.

“I think you made him mad,” Lance suggested.

“No, he’s confused,” Hunk answered.

“It’s not anything,” Adam protested. “It’s a robot.”

“No, I’m telling you, he’s confused,” Hunk insisted. “He’s not exactly telling me, but I can sort of hear it in my head.”

“It’s not confused, it’s advanced,” Adam answered, glancing back at them. “Maybe it has some kind of wireless mental feedback system and it’s echoing back something it read off you before. I don’t know.”

There was a moment of silence while Hunk considered that.

“No,” he said finally. “He’s confused. And he thinks you sound bossy.”

Takashi made a noise that sounded like he was snickering, but when Adam whipped around to look at him he pulled a straight face and looked down at the ground, pretending to examine his boot. Keith didn’t even bother to hide his smirk.

“It’s a machine,” Adam said firmly. This was the hill he was going to die on if he had to. “But regardless, whatever mechanism they have that gives flight access to a particular pilot is obviously having issues. What are you going to do about it?”

“Keith,” Takashi called, gesturing to the other two, smaller lions sitting on the tarmac. “Give Red a try.”

Keith looked around them all, visibly apologetic when he got to Lance, and stepped toward the net of light that was settled in a dome over the red lion. He stopped a few steps away from it and took a deep breath, then closed the distance and put a hand on it.

The particle barrier flickered, disappearing from the top down, and the lion’s head came down to lower a boarding ramp at Keith’s feet.

“I guess she was just a loaner,” Lance said forlornly.

“He!” Keith called back. “Red’s a he!”

“No fighting, cadets,” Takashi said firmly. “Or should I say soldiers. If you’re going to tell the Earth military that you’re military officers, then start acting like it while we’re where they can see and hear us. All right everyone, Red’s hold is much bigger than the ship Keith and Krolia came down on, let’s take him up to the cruiser. Hunk, are you coming?”

“Not yet,” Hunk answered. “I just came in with Lance, I’m gonna go stop by and see Pidge later.”

Keith was trying not to act as if this was something he wanted, for reasons Adam didn’t know and wasn’t going to ask about, but he dropped some of the pretense of being sorry and bound up the loading ramp in excitement. Krolia followed, and Lance sulked along after them. Hunk waved goodbye and headed back across the airfield, presumably to where whatever vehicle had brought them was waiting.

Takashi came to stand beside Adam, motioning for him to go first.

“After you, since you’re the guest.”

Adam looked up at the huge head, getting a close up view of the lights and features. He walked up the loading ramp slowly, getting a look at what appeared to be a high-powered laser in the back of the mouth cavity. Takashi guided him to the right, around it to a door that opened up into a ship hold.

It had space for storage, with some metal crates piled toward the back. Near the front was a built-in bed and table with an attached light and sealed drawer, likely for a pilot to use on long range flights. Some further storage closets, and some signage that Adam couldn’t understand but from the shapes assumed was pointing out multiple exits.

Krolia and Lance sat down on the crates to prepare for takeoff. Keith leaned out a door that appeared to lead to the cockpit, looking surprisingly eager for a young man who had never been interested in much.

“Want to see the controls?” He asked. “You won’t believe some of what he can do.”

Adam glanced at Takashi, who gave him a nod, and followed Keith into the cockpit. He waited to see if anyone else would join them, but Takashi took a seat back with Krolia.

“There’s no harness,” Adam noted immediately. In fact, there were no visible safety features here at all. Keith didn’t even have the helmet from that armor. That was a little bit odd for a battle machine.

“It doesn’t need one,” Keith answered, dropping into the pilot seat. There was a smile on his face, something Adam could remember seeing only rarely before everyone had disappeared. “There’s an inertia system in the cockpit. They need to sit during takeoff and landing in the hold, but up here you won’t feel anything. Even when Red crashes, at most it just throws you around a little as long as the system is working. It gets a little rough during a fight since some of the power gets diverted from it, but not bad enough to need to be strapped in.”

He turned toward the front, and the pilot seat slid forward as if of its own accord. The dim lighting of the cockpit started to brighten, red screens and overlays flickering to life. And then, most impressive of all, the whole front of the cockpit lit up with a view of outside. It was as if they were looking through a window, a full 180 degree view of their surroundings in perfect clarity.

“Cool, huh?”

Keith was grinning up at him, undoubtedly having noticed that his mouth was hanging open. Adam closed it and gave him a rueful little smile.

“Yeah. Very cool.”

Keith was excited to show off this lion to somebody who had never seen it before, obviously extremely proud of it. He started pointing out the overlays and info screens, explaining what each one did and whether he liked to use it or not. All the while he eased the lion upward, and he was right. Adam knew some kind of thrusters must be going off from the way the view shook slightly as they first started to go up but he felt nothing, and it was slightly disorienting.

Like being in the simulator while the screen was running but the body wasn’t moving, his eyes told his brain the ground should be shifting under his feet but the ground wasn’t following through. It took him a moment or two to get used to, but Adam adjusted quickly. He’d been going through astronautical training alongside the budding MFE pilots, his body was thankfully used to adjusting to strange changes in his environment.

He got caught up in Keith’s little presentation, in the demonstrations of the lion’s flight and weaponry features. He had never seen the kid so enthusiastic about anything before except Takashi, it was like he was a whole different person. Smiling an animated, and happy, it made his excitement contagious, and it didn’t hurt that the subject material was interesting.

Keith didn’t understand most of the underlying workings, just that the things here worked, but that was enough to be compelling for the short trip up out of Earth’s atmosphere. Amazingly short, amazingly smooth, and as Earth slowly grew smaller below them and the sky above faded into an inky black, Adam’s attention drifted to the view.

He had seen pictures of Earth from space. They were in textbooks and they were online, and Takashi had brought back pictures he’d taken himself from the Mars mission he’d been on. But nothing could prepare him to see it firsthand, in real color and stunning detail that only human eyes could process. The deep blues of the oceans and seas, the gentle wash of clouds looking like mere wisps painted across the surface, the sharp, jagged relief of mountain ranges giving way to foothills. Pictures did not do it justice.

“It’s pretty, isn’t it?”

Adam realized Keith had gone quiet but couldn’t remember when, having been so engrossed in the view below.

“It is,” he agreed. “It’s breathtaking.”

“We’ve seen a lot of planets,” Keith admitted, leaning forward against one of his levers to gaze downward. “Beautiful ones. But I think out of all of them, Earth is the prettiest. But, if you think that view is great, you should look up.”

Adam pulled his eyes away from the planet below and turned them upward, and immediately felt his mouth fall open again.

The ship they were approaching was an absolute behemoth, about twice as long as the titan sleeping below ground in the Garrison hangar. Its black hull reflected the light of the sun that was currently behind them, veins of blueish green running along its surface with a gentle glow. He was vaguely familiar with the shape from Sam Holt’s data, but seeing it in action was quite an experience.

“Attention GSS Daklor, this is Keith in the _red_ lion,” Adam heard Keith hailing the ship, even as distracted as he was by what he was seeing. “Requesting access through the starboard delta airlock. And could you send Princess Allura down if she’s awake? We brought a guest.”

Princess. A guest. The things Takashi had said hadn’t fully sunk in yet, even meeting Krolia—a real life alien—hadn’t set everything solidly in his brain. Being on Earth, going through his day as normal with all of these things still being slightly obscure concepts had stopped him from really understanding the significance of what was going on. Now it was really starting to hit him.

The lions were real space ships. This was an alien battleship. Keith wasn’t fully human, Takashi and these kids had been fighting an interstellar war, that unending blanket of darkness dotted with sparkling stars wasn’t anywhere near empty. He could have told himself these things as much as he wanted but until now, until he’d really seen all of it with his own eyes, it hadn’t been real.

An airlock opened on the side of the ship and the red lion glided into it, coming in for a gentle landing as the outer doors closed and the inner opened. The metallic giant walked smoothly into a cavernous hangar, and he saw different groups of people scurrying around.

“Those are Alteans,” Keith pointed out two women who were working up in a control booth nearby. They had pointed ears and what looked like brightly colored swatches on their cheeks. “Over there are more Galra. They’re part of the Blade of Marmora, that’s the resistance group Mom is part of. Those shorter guys down there are Olkari, they’re part of the Coalition. So are they over there…yeah, those three. They’re Puig.”

Adam immediately forgot everything Keith told him, simply because there was so much going on to process. The lion came to a full stop next to a blue one, and Keith shut down the consoles. It was only when the image finally blinked away and he was left staring at the blank front viewscreen of the cockpit that Adam remembered he was inside a small room with no windows. As the last of the overlays blinked off Keith rose, looking back at the doorway.

“I called for Allura,” he said. Adam turned to find Takashi in the cockpit entrance. “She should be down soon if she’s not waiting out there already.”

Takashi stepped aside so Keith could leave, and when they were alone he turned back to Adam.

“So what did you think?” He asked. “Impressive?”

“I don’t even know what to say,” Adam answered honestly. His mouth still felt like it wanted to hang open no matter how much he fought not to be a slack-jawed idiot. “It’s amazing. Everything about this ship is amazing. And this battleship…it’s huge.”

“Wait until you see some of the tech they’ve got,” Takashi smiled and stepped back again, motioning for him to leave the cockpit and disembark ahead of him. “Believe me, it’s right up your alley.”

The others had already left the ship when Adam reached the ramp, hesitating slightly before stepping off into the hangar. He recognized most of what was going on simply by virtue of being in the military and working in a hangar, even if the specifics were different the overall jobs were the same. He felt slightly lost once he was out of the general safety of the lion, uncertain of where on the cruiser he actually was or how to get anywhere else.

“Allura! Romelle!”

Adam was watching two of the small people—Puigs, he thought Keith had said—roll a cart of strange-looking tools past when he heard Lance shout. He looked over to find him and Keith running to meet a woman in a flowing pink and white gown who was crossing the hangar. Her long white hair was pulled into twists around her crown, the rest of it falling loose down her back. She was accompanied by a tall man with similarly long white hair, though their complexions were vastly different. A second woman, a blond, walked behind them a few steps. All three had pointed ears.

Keith and Lance reached her and were saying something, and Adam felt a burst of mild insecurity when they glanced back at him as they spoke.

“I wonder what they’re telling her,” he said absently as Takashi came to stand next to him. “Probably that I’m mean and almost failed Keith in Physics.”

“Nah, they’re just excited,” Takashi murmured, smiling. “We’ve met a lot of people and learned a lot about other cultures, now they’re finally going to get to show everyone parts of their own world. Kids like to share, even older ones.”

Krolia joined them as the two boys and three newcomers approached. The woman in the gown bowed her head slightly in greeting and gave him a dazzling smile.

“Adam, this is Princess Allura,” Takashi introduced. “Allura, this is Adam Wolfe, my…flight partner from back before Kerberos.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Allura politely offered him a hand, completely at ease. Adam took it, hoping that somebody would step in if it looked like he was going to embarrass them all in front of royalty. “It’s wonderful to meet a friend of Shiro’s.”

“This is Prince Lotor,” Takashi nodded to the man, who also politely offered his hand. “And Romelle, a friend of ours.”

“You’re a lot taller than you look in your picture,” Romelle blurted out as she shook his hand as well, craning her head up to look at him.

Adam thought he saw Takashi and Keith making wild cutting motions to head her off, but they immediately stopped when he looked over at them. He wondered what picture she was talking about, he didn’t think Takashi would have taken anything to Kerberos and even if he had there was no way he would have still had it after being a prisoner.

“I’m sorry to disappoint?” Adam tried, not really certain whether Romelle’s statement was a complaint or not.

“No! I just…Shiro described you and I imagined you were…shorter.” Romelle answered. She sounded like she was trying to change the subject, and looked almost painfully uncomfortable.

Adam took pity on the poor girl and let the subject drop. For all he knew Takashi had picked up a photo of him from Keith or something after he’d crashed back on Earth and everyone was embarrassed they had it. Who really knew? Honestly, it didn’t matter.

“It’s nice to meet all of you.” He wasn’t certain what else he should say. They didn’t seem like they were overly interested in formalities; the kids addressed them by first names and they weren’t bothered by the idea of shaking hands with a stranger.

He looked awkwardly to Takashi, but it was Lance who broke in impatiently and took the spotlight off of him.

“Keith said you were having trouble with Blue,” he cut into the lull in conversation thankfully taking up everyone’s attention. “Is everything all right? Red wouldn’t open up for me but she—he let Keith pilot, and I just…did Blue and Black decide somebody else on the ship was better?”

It all came out in a rush, the way Lane spoke when he was worried or anxious. Keith raised a hand to try and grab his attention.

“Dude, calm down. I don’t think that’s what’s going on.”

“I agree with Keith,” Takashi put a hand on Lance’s shoulder and pulled him back a little, trying to rein him in. “Allura…what’s going on? Something changed, and I have a feeling you know what it is.”

Allura looked down at her hands, where she was twirling a ring absently around on her index finger as an excuse not to meet their eyes. That was not the correct answer, it just appeared to worry Lance even further.

“Allura…? You’re okay, right?”

“I’m fine,” Allura answered, looking up at Lotor. He put a hand lightly on her back and she seemed to get a little bit of strength from it. “Better than fine. I’ve made a decision, and I think the lions are simply respecting it. I’ve chosen to no longer pilot the blue lion.”

“Okay, that doesn’t sound fine to me,” Keith said. “You can’t just leave Voltron, you’re part of the team.”

“And I will continue to be a part of the team,” Allura answered.

She stepped away from Lotor and motioned for the others to follow, falling into step with Shiro on one side and Lance and Keith on the other. Adam stayed back a little, sticking with Krolia since he knew her better than the others.

“I’ve learned a lot since I became a Paladin,” Allura sounded very confident in her decision. Adam didn’t really understand what was going on, but the young woman didn’t seem uncertain. “More than I ever could have dreamed I would learn. About war, about what makes a family, about my own prejudices and blind spots. About the universe, about the people in it. For a while, the blue lion was the right place for me to be to learn those things. But that’s not where I need to be anymore…I need to step up and lead, and I can’t do that properly if someone else is directing me all the time.”

She stopped as they approached the lion next to red, the great blue beast settled under its particle barrier. She was serene when she turned back to face them, smiling.

“Shiro, Keith…you’re both amazing leaders in your own right. It was and always will be one of the greatest honors of my life to fight under your commands. Please never think I was anything other than happy serving under you. But now, I have a different place in our little army.”

“Princess Allura will pilot the Sincline with me,” Lotor moved forward to stand next to her, folding his hands behind his back and facing them. “It was built with that purpose, and it should fulfill it. The Altean people have always needed a leadership I simply do not understand enough about their history to offer, they need her now more than the lions do.”

“Lotor and I have decided that it would be best if the Alteans were presented to the rest of the universe as a united people under me,” Allura confirmed. “As the Galra emperor, it would damage his hold on power if his empire learned that he had been hiding a race they long thought of as their enemies. There’s already at least one faction spearheaded by Haggar that’s trying to discredit him, and he needs to retain power if this universe is ever going to know peace.”

“You’re founding a new Altea,” Lance translated. “With you as the queen. Queen Allura of Altea and Emperor Lotor of the Galra hash out a peace treaty…that looks a lot better than Lotor hiding enemies of the state for ten thousand years.”

“Exactly. Except you’re missing one vital component,” Allura answered. “The royal house of Altea has no power without its knights. The Galra have an empire, the Alteans need Voltron.”

“You’re talking about going back to the start,” Takashi said. “The five Paladins fighting under the command of the Altean princess.”

“I would never force you into that,” Allura looked around at them. “You’re home now, after going through so much…some of it was real and some of it wasn’t, but your suffering left its mark nonetheless. I can only ask you to voluntarily continue to fight for me, fight with me, and I would think no less of you if you chose not to.”

Adam looked over at Krolia and Romelle, who both seemed to understand what was going on here better than he did. As far as he could figure, Princess Allura was asking Takashi, Keith, and Lance to potentially leave Earth again. By association, that also meant Hunk and Katie.

That didn’t really sit well with him. These were children, they shouldn’t be fighting in a war. They were cadets learning to be soldiers yes, but not soldiers yet. No matter what they’d been through or how many battles they’d fought, every adult in their lives was failing them if they continued to let them fight unless absolutely necessary. Takashi was the only one even remotely qualified to be doing any of this.

Unfortunately, Adam didn’t have a say in any of this. Apparently no sane grown up with any sense of responsibility did.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Keith was the first one to speak up, looking back at his mother, then at the others. “I already left everyone once, I’m not going to do it again. Being home doesn’t mean anything if Earth isn’t completely safe until pace is secured.”

Allura nodded and looked at Lance, who was standing to the side with his arms crossed. She reached over to take Lotor’s hand and stepped back some, pulling him along and moving herself out from between Lance at the blue particle barrier that was up behind them.

Lance took a deep breath, then stepped forward and knocked on it twice. It dropped down, and he let out a whoop of victory and ran forward to hug the giant metal paw that was closest to where he was standing.

“Me and Blue are back in business! Count us in, this team’s nothing without its ninja sharpshooter!”

“You are so not a ninja,” Keith scoffed. “Not even close, you’d probably punch yourself in the face trying.”

“Ah, jealousy,” Lance climbed up to sit on the blue lion’s paw, looking proud and smug. “Thy name is Keith.”

The two started arguing, completely undisciplined and nowhere near soldierly. Adam had no idea how the two ever managed to fight together with the way they were currently acting like bratty children, but nobody else seemed to either notice or mind.

In fact, the group moved on and left them behind. Allura, Lotor, and Shiro began walking again, leaving him, Romelle, and Krolia to follow. They went through a door at the end of the hangar that opened up into a second hangar, this one with a higher ceiling. As soon as Adam walked in, he knew why.

The black lion was huge, bigger than he’d calculated. It definitely towered over the blue and yellow ones, and positively dwarfed the red and green ones. It was obviously tucked away here alone because it couldn’t fit through the smaller airlock, and had to be stored separately. This secondary hangar was smaller lengthwise and wasn’t used for anything else, there were no aliens running around moving stock or fixing fighters in here. It was just the black lion, sitting quietly under a purple particle barrier.

Allura and Lotor stopped a few yards in, and she turned to Takashi. He slowed to a stop behind them, looking up at the monstrosity with something akin to wistfulness.

Adam knew that look. It was the way Takashi looked at the stars, the way he looked at pictures sent back by probes and sometimes watched the moon. It was a look of longing, the glint in his eye that shone when he saw somewhere he wanted to be. Allura stepped aside again and motioned for him to approach the black lion, and he took a step forward.

But then he stopped. He remained there for a moment, frozen in place, and then he tore his eyes away from the ship.

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking around at everyone. “I can’t. No, I won’t. I don’t want to.”

Everyone looked surprised. Adam didn’t know if he was supposed to be or not, he actually felt like he shouldn’t be here at all. This was a meeting of people who had been involved in a universal war, Adam had just been…gardening, probably. He couldn’t even remember most of what he’d been doing in the last few years, his life had been that safe and uneventful. He was an interloper here, along for the ride to have a tour of a space ship but stuck in the middle of what was obviously a very important conference.

“I’m home,” Takashi said in response to their looks of shock. “Like Keith said…I left that behind once, and I learned the hard way that it was the wrong decision. I don’t want to make the same mistake again.”

Takashi looked back at him, and red flags went up in Adam’s head. He was about to say some really dumb shit that they were both going to regret, Adam could feel it. Some kind of emotional or sentimental crap Adam was in no way ready to deal with right now and couldn’t run away from because he was stuck on the middle of an orbiting space ship.

“I would rather stay on Earth, and try again with you.”

There it was. Adam wondered if it was possible for him to just melt into the floor instead of having four practical strangers staring at him at this point of peak awkwardness.

There was a silence after Takashi said it, and Adam assumed he was supposed to answer. But he couldn’t, not with people staring at him. This was the kind of thing that required a conversation, not a random declaration less than forty-eight hours after they’d finally seen each others’ faces again.

The silence dragged on, and people started to get uncomfortable. Adam really needed it to end.

“Can you all excuse us for a minute?” He requested.

Everyone looked at Takashi, who had red creeping up his neck and wouldn’t meet their eyes. They filed out of the room, and the door closed behind them with a soft ‘whoosh.’ The two men were left alone.

“You couldn’t just play obnoxiously loud music under my bedroom window so I could call the cops on you?” Adam asked. “You had to do this in front of the aliens?”

“Starting to wish I did,” Takashi admitted. “I didn’t really mean to say it, it just came out. I didn’t exactly plan ahead on being rejected in front of an audience.”

Adam ran a hand through his hair, glancing back to make sure they were really alone. When he was satisfied that he had some privacy, he moved forward to stand next to Takashi and look up at the giant lion sitting quietly in the hangar.

“How long did we know each other before we got together?” He asked.

“Wow, I don’t even…years,” Takashi said, thinking back. “All through the academy, and a couple years after. Six years, I guess?”

“Things were nice then,” Adam remembered. “We used to sneak out after dark to go up to the roof through the broken old fire exit door. Lay up there and look at the sky and plan how we were going to go out and start whole colonies on planets we were going to discover.”

Takashi smiled at the memory, nodding slightly. “Then we’d get bored and talk about everything else under the sun.”

Adam slid his hands into his pockets, still looking up at the lion. Things had been simpler then, back when they were still kids. Back when the worst they really had to worry about was whether they did the homework, and had nights spent lying under the stars sharing secrets to look forward to.

“Forget about when we were together,” Adam requested. “Forget about the fight over Kerberos. Forget about leaving. Talk to me about this, as a friend. We never stopped being those, even when we disagreed. Talk to me like we’re laying on the roof under the stars.”

He felt Takashi come to stand a little closer, looking at the woven strands of purple light in front of them that protected the black lion from having anyone approach.

“This…is heavy,” Takashi admitted after a moment. “But I love it. I love being the Black Paladin. I love leading this group of idiots. I love waking up in the morning knowing that it’s in my power to rescue planets and change lives. But that’s all I really started to be over the last year. The Black Paladin.

“Keith was there so I was lucky in the beginning, but after he found out he was half-Galra and connected with the Blade of Marmora he didn’t need an older brother around as much. Kolivan was there for him instead, and he left for a while. When he came back he had his mother, I’ve just been…here. I’m here when they need a leader, I’m here when they need direction. I’m here when they need the Black Paladin, but nobody ever really needs Shiro.

“I don’t know, maybe it could be different now. There are a lot more people around now that we have the Altean refugees, people my age. I guess I’m just tired of sitting around quietly waiting to be needed for a fight, I always wanted to be a hero but I never knew it would be this lonely.”

Takashi looked up at the black lion almost forlornly. It wouldn’t have taken a genius to see he desperately wanted this, it would have been clear even if Adam didn’t know him the way he did.

“I saw an alternate reality,” Takashi admitted after a moment. “I lived it. One where we came back home to a planet occupied by the Galra. You were dead, you died trying to hold back the initial invasion. The MFEs weren’t complete yet, the Atlas wasn’t up and running, Earth had no defenses.”

“How do you know about the Atlas?” Adam frowned. “Curtis said you only went over basics and nobody debriefed you on that project.”

“I know about it because the reality I saw was this reality,” Takashi answered. “Some of the things we did took Voltron out of commission for a few years and everything we’d worked for with the Coalition and the war went down the drain. I can’t explain the full thing to you now, just believe me when I say something happened that let us come back to this point in the timeline, to try and fix what we did.

“I spent thirty years of my life with you dead. The war ended, we all moved on, I got married, I retired. But I always kept thinking about your picture on the memorial wall and about how my bad decisions ended up with you there. I always regretted going to Kerberos, I always regretted choosing space over you. I always wished things had turned out differently, and now I have the chance to pick you instead and make that happen.”

This was a mess. That was putting it mildly, but it was really the only way to put it. Adam and Takashi had not been on the same page toward the end, that was why they’d ended up breaking up in the first place, and that lack of understanding was affecting Takashi even now years later. Adam looked past him at the lion, then around at the hangar.

“Who did you marry?” He asked. “Anybody I know? He’s not better looking, is he?”

“Adam…”

“I know, I’m kidding. Mostly, we’ll come back to that later,” Adam lightly nudged him with his elbow. “But you’re looking at the rest of it all wrong, Takashi. Kerberos wasn’t about you choosing between me and space.”

“That’s not what saying “how much do I mean to you” after I told you how much the Kerberos mission meant to me sounded like it meant,” Takashi answered.

“Oh, you can remember what I said almost three years ago, but you couldn’t remember me telling you to change the lightbulb in the bathroom three times in one week.”

“I’m trying to be serious.”

“So am I. You hear what you want to hear, you always have. Do you remember the part where I said it was your life that we were talking about? That I was worried you were too sick for a trip to the edge of the solar system? You wanted to ignore that every mission you went on made it worse.”

“Kerberos was going to be my last one,” Takashi insisted. “I knew I could do it, Adam. After that I was going to retire, I just needed you to support me on it.”

“Every mission was your last mission,” Adam reminded him. “Until the next one you just couldn’t turn down came up. You weren’t going to stop, I knew that. In the beginning I thought I could handle it, but I couldn’t. It’s one thing to stand by someone while they’re dying and know that they’re doing everything they can to prolong their life, but it’s another to try and stand by someone who just doesn’t care.”

“Of course I cared!” Takashi protested, starting to lose his cool. “But I didn’t want to waste away slowly! I didn’t want to spend the end of my life laying in a bed relying on you for everything!”

Now that was a new element to the old argument. It had been years since that argument had been put to rest by Takashi leaving, but that fresh admission just reinforced the sting of old wounds.

“So, you cared about you,” Adam surmised. “You cared about how you felt about dying, not about how anybody you left behind would feel. You cared about whether you could go out in a blaze of glory. You were vain and wanted to be remembered as the Garrison’s top pilot, not as a sick man fading away.

“But that’s okay,” he added quickly before Takashi could get more riled. “It was your life and you had every right to feel however you felt. But that was what our fight was about Takashi…the way you wanted to die, not Kerberos. It wasn’t about space at all. It wasn’t about me trying to stifle your dreams or hold you back. I asked you to choose whether you wanted to die alone or if you trusted me enough to spend those final days with me."

He looked up at Takashi, not bothering to mince words or be gentle. Kerberos had hurt, a lot. Adam had supported Takashi for years, finding out some icy rock out in space was where he wanted to spend what were potentially his last days instead of in Adam’s company had been a slap in the face. Everything he had put into this relationship, into their partnership, into their friendship, and it hadn’t been as important as a moon nobody outside of the space research community cared about.

“I think you made me the bad guy,” Adam said after a moment. “You took my concern and called it smothering you. You took me telling you I couldn’t do it anymore and painted it as an ultimatum. You couldn’t just admit that you were doing what you wanted to do with your life and that what we had didn’t fit into it anymore. It was easier to say I made you pick me or space, because nobody would ever blame you for picking space in that case.”

Adam put a hand on Shiro’s shoulder and pushed him forward, walking toward the glowing purple barrier a few yards away.

“Now you’re doing it again, using me as a reason for your decision. Well that’s not going to work this time, Takashi. I was asking you if I was important enough to you to be worth what time you had left. You decided to be alone, because you didn’t think you’d live long enough to face the consequences. Now you’re here, you’ve seen what being alone is like, and you don’t like it. You’re trying to swing it the other way but still make me the bad guy, so if you regret giving up being a lion pilot later you can resent me instead of face the fact that you picked wrong.”

Adam stopped in front of the barrier. He lifted Takashi’s hand and pressed it against the wall of light, holding it there with his own. Like the others, after a moment the shield came down and the ship’s eye lights started to glow.

“Stop using me as your buffer,” Adam said, letting go of Takashi’s hand and taking a step back away from him. “Wake up and realize it was never me or space, and it’s never going to be me or space. Giving up something you love now isn’t going to act like some magical sacrifice that will wipe away that you left and let you start over with no points against you. I’m sorry for whatever you lived through and I’m sorry it obviously hurt you, but you being sad because of choices you made isn’t some universe-wide tragedy. It’s just life, the rest of us go through it every day.”

Takashi looked up at the black lion, and Adam thought he saw relief in his eyes. He didn’t want to give this up and Adam wasn’t going to make him. This was far beyond anything they had ever dreamed of as cadets, there was no way in hell Adam was going to have this man shit-talking him in five years because he’d given up an advanced space ship of his very own.

After a moment, Takashi turned back to him, his eyes darkening again.

“So is that it, then?” He asked. “We’re definitely done and over? I don’t have a chance anymore?”

“I don’t think I’d say…that, exactly,” Adam said reluctantly, not looking at him. “We’re definitely done and over, that ended years ago. We pretty officially broke up. But I won’t say you don’t have a chance anymore. I love you, Takashi, I never stopped, but sometimes that really isn’t enough. What happens now depends entirely on whether you not dying anymore has made you any less of a jackass.”

He would have loved to say they could pick up right where they’d left off, but where they’d left off hadn’t really been so great. Their relationship really had ended, if anything was going to come of it they’d have to start again. Start as friends, work their way back up to lovers, if it could even be done.

“Nobody’s called me a jackass in years,” Takashi answered. There was a faint smile on his face as he ran a hand through his hair. “I think you might be the only one brave enough.”

“I have a lot worse to call you, but I’m saving it for later in case you can’t do better.”

Takashi nodded, smiling a little more. He looked up from where he was now absently kicking at the floor, leaning over to lightly nudge Adam’s calf with his foot.

“So…do you want to hang out sometime?” He asked.

“I don’t know,” Adam held back, just to give him a bit of a hard time. “I’m not sure if you’re really my type, Shirogane. I’m a Major now, I need someone on my level.”

“Then you’re in luck because honestly,” Takashi gestured first to himself then up to the huge lion in front of them. “I’m kind of a big deal in space.”

Adam tried to keep his straight face and serious demeanor, he really did. But Takashi had been a charmer when they were younger and that hadn’t changed now. And maybe he did try to load blame onto other people for his bad decisions, but he still made those decisions and went after what he wanted whether it was a bad idea or not.

Adam just wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing that he was still one of the things Takashi wanted.

“I’ll think about it,” he promised, ducking his head to hide that he was failing at keeping a smile at bay. “Check back in a couple hours, I might change my mind.”

“Well, I’ll give you a little bit of time to think about it without me in your face,” Takashi offered. “I have to talk to Allura and Lotor, this really is a big change their making. I won’t be too long, I promise, but in the meantime Romelle can show you some of the ship. If that’s okay.”

“No, it’s fine,” Adam said honestly, following as Takashi led him out of the secondary hangar and into the main one. “I’d love to get a look around.”

The others were waiting, all of them looking awkward and uncomfortable as the two of them approached. Takashi cleared his throat and shifted from foot too foot.

“Okay, well…I don’t need a ride back down anymore since I, um, have Black now. Romelle, can you do me a favor and show Adam the engineering department for me? I have to talk to Allura but I shouldn’t be too long.”

“Oh, of course!” Romelle brightened, and Adam thought she looked glad to be getting away from the group. He didn’t doubt everyone had been talking about them while they were in the other hangar, eyes were lingering on him for an uncomfortably long time and he could only imagine what people had said.

Takashi walked them across the hangar to an elevator, and when it opened Adam followed Romelle inside. Takashi stopped in the doorway, looking conflicted for a moment, before he leaned inside.

“I have something I need to say,” he announced, his hand hovering over the buttons inside the elevator. “I’m going to feel like I liar if I don’t, and if we’re really starting over then that’s not how I want to start.”

He took a deep breath.

“Curtis,” he said, slapping one of the buttons on the control panel and stepping back as the doors started to close. “I married Curtis.”

“You…hold on, I’m sorry, you _what_?” Adam sputtered not able to comprehend at first the words that Takashi had said.

There was no answer. The elevator doors slid completely closed, giving Takashi a temporary reprieve.


End file.
